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Six Tourist Beaches in Bali Are Polluted, Lab Tests Show
Made Arya Kencana | July 30, 2010

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Jeanne Hachette
10:45am Jul 30, 2010

Nothing new in this article. The only way to improve thing is to hurt the people where it is the more painful , their wallet. Restaurant owners in Jimbaran don't even have the brain and the will to clean 20 metes of sand in front of their business. So let's boycott them to teach them a lesson or maybe they can open a new branch in Bantar Gebang. Poor planning , lack of respect for the most basic rules, greed, we have the results in Bali. Very Sad indeed. The cherry on the top of the Indonesian pie is now rotten.

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Denpasar.  Bali may still be the Island of the Gods and the Island of a Thousand Temples, but it is certainly no longer the island of pristine beaches, an academic said on Thursday.

Researcher Ketut Sundra, from the Department of Biology at state-run Udayana University in Denpasar, said that laboratory tests on seawater from six popular tourist beaches showed they were polluted.

“The lab test results showed the presence of pollutants that exceed the environmental quality standards at all six beaches,” Sundra said.

He named the six beaches as Kuta, Legian, Nusa Dua, Jimbaran, Tanjung Benoa and Canggu, all of which are located in Badung district in the southern part of Bali, an area that is particularly popular with tourists.

Speaking at a seminar at his university, Sundra said that samples of the seawater were taken during both the dry and rainy season in 2008 and 2009, and that 19 parameters were tested.

“Kuta, Legian, Jimbaran and Nusa Dua can be categorized as lightly polluted, while Tanjung Benoa and Canggu are moderately polluted,” he said.

He said that eight pollutants had been found on the beaches, meaning that the seawater failed to meet the standard necessary to be classified as clean.

Sundra said that among the pollutants found were nitrates, nitrites, phosphates, cadmium and lead. However, he gave no figures for the levels of each pollutant in the water.

Sundra blamed the pollution on ineffective waste management by hotels, restaurants and other hospitality and tourist-related businesses in the area.

Another Udayana University researcher, environmental hydrology specialist Nyoman Sunarta, said that the unbridled development of the hotel industry in southern Bali had also lowered the water table and led to seawater intrusion.

Sunarta said that by 1995, the intrusion had already reached 5 kilometers inland at a depth of 70 meters, adding “nowadays, it is certainly worse than 15 years ago.”

He added that his research concluded that by 2015, Bali would begin to suffer from the effects of a clean-water deficit.

This water deficit, he said had already led to unproductive rice paddies on the southern coast, prompting their conversion to residential areas.

“The increasing water deficit in Bali is also caused by the lack of care of the island’s water sources,” he said.

Bali’s current global profile is on the rise, with visitor numbers increasing by 21 percent between 2008 and 2009.

The island, which is the country’s prime international tourist destination, is set to raise its profile higher still by playing host to a number of major events, including the 2013 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and the 2014 Miss World pageant.