Indonesia mud volcano still eruption

[Mayabird]

Also the mud is full of methane. Just to make things worse.

Indonesia's 'mud volcano' still spewing, two years on
JAKARTA, May 28 (AFP) May 28, 2008
Two years after it oozed into life, Indonesia's "mud volcano" is still spewing toxic sludge across the Javanese countryside at the rate of 60 Olympic swimming pools a day.

And the more homes and farms that disappear beneath its stinking grey goo, the louder the calls for justice from hundreds of displaced families who are awaiting compensation.

"There is always a fear that even where we are staying we will be flooded with mud. Recently the dyke at Renokenongo subsided two metres (yards), new gas leaks are everywhere," said Sunarto, who lives near the mudflow.

"When the wind blows westward we can smell the strong odour from here. It seems like there's no end, but there would be if only the government would act more swiftly."

Like something from a B-list 1950s horror movie, Sunarto's nightmare began two years ago on Thursday when the mud first emerged from beneath the earth and began to swallow a corner of Sidoarjo district in East Java.

It came from a gas well where Lapindo Brantas, a company owned by the family of billionaire welfare minister Aburizal Bakrie, was drilling without proper equipment.

Lapindo says the disaster was triggered by an earlier earthquake in the central Javanese city of Yogyakarta, which it says squeezed open the earth's pores and brought the sea of methane-filled mud squirting to the surface.

But while the authorities argue over who, if anyone, is to blame, the mud marches on, burying villages and making people ill with foul plumes of highly concentrated methane gas. Worried locals have said it gets so bad they are afraid to cook in case the flammable cloud explodes.

"The latest data from March this year shows around 640 hectares (1,580 acres) of land is flooded by the mud," said Ahmad Zulkarnain, spokesman for the government team which is responding to the disaster.

Up to 150,000 cubic metres -- equivalent to 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools -- of hot sludge is still gushing from the volcano's steaming lips every day, he said.

So far all efforts to stem the mudlow, including dropping huge concrete balls down the hole, have failed.

Twelve villages have been affected and at least 36,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.

"Two villages, Kedungbendo and Renokenongo, are completely inundated, the other 10 are partially affected," said Zulkarnain.

Aerial photographs of Kedungbendo and Renokenongo show nothing but rooftops poking through the thick slime.

Ignoring the company's excuses, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last year ordered Lapindo to pay 3.8 trillion rupiah (420.7 million dollars) for compensation and mud containment efforts.

The government has also decided to allot 700 billion rupiah (77 million dollars) in state funds to the relief and rebuilding effort, although it is unclear how much of that money has been dispersed.

Many locals complain however that it is too little, too late.

Lapindo executive Yuniwati Teryana told AFP the company had already spent 3.2 trillion rupiah on land compensation and rebuilding even though a court ruled in December that the mudflow was a "natural disaster."

Lapindo patriarch Bakrie was named Indonesia's richest man in a report by GlobeAsia magazine this week, with an estimated net worth of 9.2 billion dollars amassed through energy, property and communications investments.

Most of the 12,039 claimants to the company's money, those who could produce documentation of ownership, have received a first instalment of 20 percent of the value of their land, Teryana said.

The remainder will be paid later this month, she promised.

"The rest who cannot show a land ownership certificate will be resettled with the same land area as the one they lost," she said, adding that more than 1,000 claimants would be compensated in this way.

But another 582 households or 2,000 people are still living in makeshift shelters, refusing both payment schemes and demanding Lapindo buy their lost homes so they can rebuild elsewhere.

Sunarto, his wife, two children and two other relatives are among those refusing to budge, even though Lapindo has stopped giving them daily food rations and despite having to buy clean water.

"Lapindo offered to relocate us but unless they give us guarantees about when we can actually see and move into our new homes I won't give them my documents," Sunarto said.

http://www.terradaily.com/2007/08052802 ... qb40e.html