Unreported World - Autumn 2014

27 October 2014

The World's Dirtiest River - Friday 11 April, 7:30pm

Channel 4’s critically acclaimed, award winning world affairs strand returns with a startling film from the Indonesian island of Java - home to the planet’s most polluted river and a textile industry supplying some of the world’s biggest fashion brands.

Reporter Seyi Rhodes and Director Hugo Ward expose the extraordinary amount of untreated toxic waste from the textile factories, non-degradable plastics, household rubbish, dead animals and fish and human effluent blanketing the Citarum river, which 35 million people rely on for drinking, cooking and washing.

The team accompanies former fisherman Herman and his son as they push their boat through rubbish which is so thick that they can’t see the surface of the river. Forty years ago Herman made a good living from fishing. Now, with 60 per cent of the fish species wiped out as the river is starved of oxygen and polluted with toxic waste, he is after another catch – plastic which can be re-cycled.

Thirty miles upstream, the river passes through Majalaya - a major industrial area and home to a booming textiles industry. The Unreported World team sees how water from the Citarum is channelled through one village, polluting the drinking wells and communal washing areas.  One man tells Rhodes that he has to use a cloth to filter the water as it irritates his skin: “On Sundays the water is a little bit better, less murky. Other days it turns green, yellow, red, and black,” he says.

The village children are clearly suffering from contact with the water, which is contaminated not only with the textile waste, but also human excrement - as the channels serve as both sewer and bathroom. One local doctor says around 60 per cent of local children have skin infections like impetigo as a result.

And this isn’t the only health hazard. The Unreported World team enlists local scientist Dr Sunardi to test samples from the village and the river. The results are seriously concerning: all the water sources are contaminated with heavy metals – including the drinking well, which has mercury levels nearly four times the recommended safe level. Dr Sunardi tells Rhodes that the villagers, and particularly the children, who drink the water are at risk of cancer and mental and physical retardation.

The villagers are well aware of the problems. But they are conflicted. More than half of the adults in this region work in textile factories which are their only source of income. One villager says the factory he works in regularly dumps toxic waste directly into the river at night. 

Indonesia’s Association of Textile Manufacturers says its 200 members on the Citarum treat their wastewater, but it accepts that hundreds more textile factories - which don’t belong to their organisation - pour untreated waste into the river.

Unreported World interviews Indonesia’s Deputy Minister for the Environment, Arief Yuwomo. He tells Rhodes: “We have a few strategies in place and we hope we can reduce these problems. If factories are breaching these laws we will take enforcement action against them.” The government claims it has shut down a factory for illegally dumping chemical waste into the Citarum, but it wouldn’t disclose any details of the incident or name the factory.

Meanwhile, some of the villagers are forced to take their own action. They’ve decided to try to block one of the outlet pipes which is releasing toxic waste into the river, in the hope it floods the factory. It’s a dangerous operation, but for the villagers it seems the only way they will get their concerns noticed.

Reporter: Seyi Rhodes
Director: Hugo Ward