Surabaya links waste-site enforcement to lawful operating routes

Surabaya’s latest action against illegal waste handling began at seven city-owned sites in Keputih, Sukolilo, on 1 October. The municipality reported the operation the following day, describing complaints about odor and potential water pollution alongside a broader effort to identify unauthorized use of municipal land. Its approach combines enforcement with assistance for operators willing to meet legal and environmental requirements.

Municipal land provides an enforceable starting point

The environment department worked with ward and district officials to identify 97 parcels associated with the problem. The October operation addressed seven sites as part of staged handling; it did not establish that all 97 parcels had been cleared. That distinction fixes the scale of the observed intervention and the work still ahead.

City ownership gives the municipality a direct basis for requiring proper use of the premises. It does not, by itself, answer whether the waste operation is environmentally acceptable. The city’s account treats land access and waste handling as connected requirements: an operator needs a lawful place to work and controls appropriate to the activity carried out there.

The account also includes technical support from ITS academic Susi Agustina Wilujeng for regulating waste operations. Her comments identify leachate, odor and fire as relevant risks and emphasise that private land is not an exemption from environmental requirements. The land boundary determines one enforcement route, while the environmental concern extends beyond the ownership of a particular parcel.

Formalisation requires an operating standard

The city offers education and licensing assistance to recyclers willing to comply. Its listed requirements include legal access to land, sorting equipment, wastewater treatment and scheduled movement of residual waste. This gives the alternative to closure a substantive meaning: obtaining permission must be accompanied by changes in how the site works.

Sorting can recover useful material, but it also leaves a fraction requiring disposal. Wastewater treatment addresses another output of the handling process. Scheduled removal prevents the residue from becoming a permanent accumulation after recyclable material has been sold. These requirements concern different parts of the operation; a licence document cannot perform any of them on its own.

The practical distinction is between supporting recycling activity and accepting any site that calls itself a recycling business. The municipality is attempting to retain a lawful route for the activity while controlling its location and outputs. The reported October action establishes that this approach is being applied, but it does not yet establish how many operators have completed licensing or installed the required equipment.

Earlier clearance exposes the residual-waste problem

An August operation in Keputih addressed an unauthorized waste-processing area of approximately 1.4 hectares. The city reported 32 dump-truck movements carrying remaining waste to Benowo disposal facilities. That is evidence of a removal operation and a destination. It is not a measured tonnage, and the number of truck trips cannot establish how much waste was recovered or diverted.

The August account described a parallel effort to trace collection arrangements for 5,064 hotel, restaurant and café businesses using 38 vendors. The questions included who collected the waste, how much they carried and where the residual fraction went. Those questions reach upstream of the processing site and connect a business’s collection contract to the final handling of what cannot be sold.

A cleared parcel can reappear elsewhere in the waste chain if the collection service still lacks a lawful destination for its residues. Tracing vendors therefore supplies information that site-by-site enforcement cannot produce alone. The retained municipal accounts establish that tracing was an operational objective; they do not provide a completed audit reconciling every generator, collector and disposal load.

Restoration and performance remain to be demonstrated

The October account includes plans to plant trees after cleanup. That prospective land use should be distinguished from achieved restoration. Removing waste, confirming the condition of the ground and establishing a planted site are separate steps. The public account does not demonstrate improved water quality or quantify a reduction in odor after the operation.

The seven-site action provides a concrete implementation example because it has identified premises, participating authorities and a reported enforcement date. Its limits are equally clear. The larger parcel inventory remains a program of staged work, the route to legal operation depends on compliance, and the waste-flow tracing needs results before it can demonstrate full custody of residues.

For Surabaya waste enforcement to deliver a durable change, the lawful alternative must function beyond the day a stockpile is removed. A collector needs somewhere authorized to send material; a processor needs to control wastewater and separate useful material; residual waste needs onward transport and an accepted destination. The municipality has named these operating requirements. Whether the complete route works consistently will depend on what operators and regulators can demonstrate in subsequent practice.