Nightmare on Earth
If you fell asleep and had a nightmare of being in a dirty, nasty, disgusting place, would you enjoy it? Or, would you rather have a dream of being in a clean paradise? This Earth is not a paradise, that nightmare is reality. Face it, we see this nightmare in almost all parts of the world. If you think you are far away from the “nasty” parts of the Earth, oh how you are wrong.
One of the causes for this Earth to be “nasty” is pollution. Pollution comes in many forms, like candy. But unlike candy, it’s not sweet. It is the most bitter thing in this entire planet. There is water pollution, air pollution, soil pollution, and many more. Air pollution is a huge deal. No matter what country you’re in, there’s air. Air is polluted. Air pollution is caused by many factors. Such as, smoke from vehicles, smoke from factories/industry, and burning trash. Although we cannot undo what we have done to cause air pollution, but we can reduce it. Next is water pollution, it is caused by littering in waterways in liquid form or solid form. It can also be caused by the overuse of pesticides (where the pesticides run into the water from the farm area). 70% of the Earth is water, too! Sound pollution is the next one. Sound pollution comes in some forms, it can be caused by industrial machine sounds, vibration due to 2 objects sliding against each other, and the movement of liquids, gas, and air (wind). Soil pollution is also bad. Plants grow in soil, and what do we do without plants? We need a plant 2x our current height to so the plant can restore the amount of oxygen we need. If there were no plants, we would be dead by now! Soil, water, and air is extremely crucial for living beings. The loss of all of these would be fatal for life itself. Pollution can cause diseases, loss of our daily needs, loss of our main abilities such as hearing, hunger, even death, and many more.
The pollution that will be discussed here is soil pollution. Soil is crucial for our life. It’s for plants to grow, where we build housing, where we live, where we can breathe, where animals live, where we can find resources, and many more. Wait, so what if there’s no soil? It’s an easy answer, we would die. The majority of earth is water. So, there’s less soil. Due to global warming, the sea level has been rising. We can see that in Jakarta (Indonesia) it floods frequently because of the sea level. If the water consumes soil, homes would be lost and some businesses would be lost such as small stores. There are some causes of soil pollution. The causes are mining, activities done by military, waste, bad wastewater management, wastewater that is absorbed by soil, farming, overuse (too much use) of pesticides during farming activities, and oil spills. The effects of soil being polluted by so much things is that the soil will not be fertile anymore so plants will not flourish like how they did before the soil was polluted, degrading the soil quality, reduces how much water the soil can filter. Since the soil is polluted, the groundwater and the water in soil become polluted too. The nutrients in the soil can become imbalanced because of the pollution. Animals and plants can die.
So, there are many cases of pollution that has impacted things around us. Do you remember when the last time you saw trash just casually lying on the ground? I’m sure it hasn’t been very long ago. So, there is a case in our country, Indonesia. The case is in Sidoarjo Regency. The case in Sidoarjo is worse than you think. But, before you are told, some people might not know what and where Sidoarjo is. Sidoarjo is a district located in East Java.
The case is called The Lapindo Muflow in Sidoarjo Regency. It is widely known in Indonesia as “Lumpur Lapindo” which directly translates to “Lapindo Mud”. The case that we are talking about had started on 29th May, 2006. That is almost 17 years ago! The reason it occurred is either because of a mistake during mining or because of the earthquake that happened 2 days prior. Lapindo Brantas Inc. started it because of the drilling activity they were doing. The drilling caused hot mud to start spraying from inside the ground out to the village. So, what happened? At 4.30 AM (West Indonesian Time), hot mud started spraying from the middle of a vegetation in Porong District, Sidoarjo Regency. It came from “Sumur Banjar Panji-1” (the location where Lapindo Brantas Inc. was drilling for a gas exploration). The reason for it isn’t exactly known, but there are 2 theories on why it happened. The first theory is that it happened as an effect of the 5.9 magnitude earthquake in Yogyakarta (a city in Central Java, Indonesia). The earthquake had happened 2 days before the hot mud spray had started. The second one is that they had a mistake during mining. Lapindo Brantas Inc. had been warned 11 days prior to put a casing pipe underground to protect the wall around the drill. They reached the edge formation 2 804 meters underground and they had agreed that 5 meters under the formation they were going to put the casing pipe. They then continued drilling 2 600 more meters into the ground. However, the moment they had reached 2 834 meters underground, the eruption of water vapor/steam and gas was visible. People think that it happened because of mud, water, and gas had mixed underground. Those materials then started coming out of the ground due to the pressure. The spraying of hot mud had then reached housing of the villagers there. It caused many people to evacuate and lose their houses. The gas coming out had Hydrogen Sulfide in it which then poisoned 2 citizens.
The company and government tried to stop the hot mud from spraying out. The company tried by pouring heavy mud into the well but it couldn’t stop the hot mud from spreading, and then tried to use walls to retain the mud. But there were already 750 houses and 2 train rails covered in mud by the time they finished. The walls had got broken many times that caused them to keep fixing the wall. The president at the time, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono widely known as SBY made a strategy that he released in 2006 and 2007. They tried fixing it by trying to make an agency to control the mudflow. But, the results weren’t very good. The Lapindo would give compensation to the citizens who have lost their houses by buying the land covered by mud which costed 3.8 Trillion Rupiah. People around the place also needed to receive compensation. However, they only paid 3.03 Trillion Rupiah, so they borrowed money from the Indonesian Government. But, the company did not pay even after they were supposed to pay their debt (when it was due) in 2019. So, the government indirectly gave compensation for the citizens. The total was 11.27 trillion Rupiah even though it might need more money. This case is the biggest methane disaster in the world.
This tragedy still continues until today because the hot mud still sprays out even if it might be not as much as before. The impact of this disaster is massive! It ruined many ecosystems, plants, and many more. The mud covers 16 villages and 3 districts. 30 factories had to stop business because of how much mud was there. 1 873 workers had to stop or lost their job due to this disaster. 77 Public Facilities had been flooded or impacted by the mud and around 25 000 people had to evacuate. 750 houses were flooded and the train trails Surabaya to Malang and Surabaya to Banyuwangi had to be closed. Around 6 hectares of land is covered by all the mud due to this disaster. If you are wondering how bad it is, the mudflow is like a flood. The flood is also very high. The height of the walls to stop it became 12 meters in 2017 and it had to be fixed multiple times before that. If this happened to us, we would have been desperate and maybe panic. The gas coming out of it is toxic which caused it to be poisonous for humans. The huge land there was no longer fertile. Fertile land is crucial in Indonesia for farming. A lot of land in Java is fertile so that is also something lost. Many people also had no place to go or to work. This pollutes the land. The no longer fertile land has no more plants and even land around it is also polluted. Water is absorbed by soil, so the water under the ground becomes polluted and that polluted water becomes mud because it has mixed with soil and gas. The gas is also wasted. So, if surrounding citizen take water from the waterways, the water could possibly be polluted with harmful chemicals that could be toxic. So, there is possibility the water the use could be polluted. The polluted soil does not have the same capacity of carbon that it can absorb compared to normal soil that is in good condition. Climate change can be caused by many factors and types of pollution. It can also be caused by soil pollution. The examples of climate change due to soil pollution are changing precipitation patterns, changing temperature, and many others. We lose many resources that we can eat and develop, and so do animals!
Now, how do we prevent the reality of pollution? It all comes down to our hands. You might think, “I’m just one person, how would I be able to stop this nightmare by myself?”. But you, yourself can take part in making paradise a reality. It’s true, we can’t stop this planet from being a nightmare by ourselves. So, how in the world are we going to stop it? Well, the Sidoarjo Mudflow (the current area with the most polluted soil in the world) cannot be stopped. But, all of us can see that what was happened there is a warning for us all, that we should stop exploiting natural resources. That process isn’t something directly in our power. First, we have to work together. So, we can change by using things powered by electricity. There are electric cars, motorcycles, stoves, kettles, water heaters, and many others. With the reduced demand of gases and fuels, companies do not need to keep drilling into land. Drilling such land is also dangerous. Another way to prevent soil pollution is to stop littering into soil. This won’t necessarily stop cases like the mudflow in Sidoarjo to appear again, but the soil would be clean and fertile. Trash such as pieces of glass and ceramic floor tiles or any shards that are sharp are also not good. It’s hard to walk on it without proper protection and if it has any chemicals, the water that can come out of the soil is polluted too. We should also influence others by telling them the bad things that will happen to the soil if they overplant it and if they use too much pesticides when they are planting. We can stop using so much thin plastic packaged products because those too will end up in landfills, causing soil pollution. Burnt trash also can cause air pollution. If you have any trash from detergent or soap, do not throw it into the soil, it may even end up in waterways. It isn’t very delightful to have floating dead fish, you know? You can recycle glass, plastic, metal, rubber, and many other inorganic trash or waste. Planting plants can also help the humus layer of soil from being destroyed due to rain (Humus is an organic material that is a combination of decaying plant and animal matter). Soil can also become polluted due to deforestation. Deforestation can cause soil erosion.
Another way is to do bioremediation. Bioremediation is a way to detoxify matter. It can use some living organisms such as microorganisms, plants, microbial, plant, and plant enzymes. It decontaminates contaminated areas. It can be used to decontaminate contaminants in the soil and also for other environments. We can also benefit from this accident for future generations. There actually are rare metals/materials found in Sidoarjo Mudflow which can be used to make items and others.
Wait, so why would we do this? We should do this so future generations can see the Earth in good condition. Many plants and animals’ species could go extinct in the future if we do not do this. Our generations could still be alive in 2100, I don’t want to see a fully mudflow consumed island. Hopefully the governments’ efforts to stop it will work and it will stop. The climate changes, what if it changes more rapidly in the future? Maybe the temperature would change so quickly! It would be interesting, but not very pleasing. You and I don’t want this to happen, so we should start by doing tiny steps!
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