Banyuwangi Probes Mercury Pollution
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Jumat, 26 Juli 2013 12:12 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Banyuwangi - Banyuwangi Regent, Anwar Abdullah Anas, said the regency's administration will deploy a team from the Environment Agency to investigate the mercury pollution in Lampon River. "We will carefully investigate whether or not [the river] is polluted with mercury," he told reporters on Thursday, July 25.
According to Anas, he had no knowledge of the existence of home industries that uses mercury to dredge gold in the district Pesanggaran. If those home industries do exist, he said, the police should crack them down because those places have no mining licenses.
Currently there are about 90 home-based gold dredging industries that use mercury to separate gold from sand. Twenty of them are rented while 70 are privately used.
Suparjiono, one of the owners of said dredging houses, said that in a month he uses five pounds of mercury for 20 processes of gold ore separation. That means that the amount of mercury waste generated amounts to 200 liters per process. The grayish waste is directly discharged into his backyard.
Home-based gold mining began in 2008, a year after gold mining company Indo Multi Niaga bagged the exploration contract of a gold concession of more than 11,600 hectares in the forest of Mount Tumpang Pitu. Nearly seven thousand miners--comprising of local residents and people who came from outside the region--came in a gold rush to look for the precious metal in the jungles.
Based on the research conducted by Susintowati, a lecturer for the August 17 1945 University, mercury waste had polluted the Lampon River in Pesanggaran district. The estuary, which borders on the Indian Ocean, the mercury level reaches 1.17 ppm. This is very alarming given the fact that the Minister of Environment's Decree No.51/2004 stipulates that the safe limit of mercury waste in rivers is only 0.07 mg/liter.
IKA NINGTYAS