Originally published on 8/19/2006 by The Jakarta Post (Internet Version-WWW) in English

Thousands of distressed residents in Sidoarjo, East Java, will have to wait at least three months to see if a new plan can halt the torrent of mud from a May 29 industrial accident that has overrun their homes, a turnpike and factories.

PT Energi Mega Persada, main shareholder of Lapindo Brantas Inc., which owns the gas exploration site where the disaster occurred, revealed the plan Friday [ 18 Aug] after a previous method failed to work.

That plan relied on a re-entry well and side-tracking of the effluent.

PT Energi Mega Persada's chief operating officer Faiz Shahab said the side-tracking had to be stopped because there was damage to the casing at a depth of between 1,060 and 1,500 feet, due to land movement near the gas drilling site.

The side-tracking also needed to be replaced since the temporary ponds for the diverting of the mud could no longer be raised. Currently, the pond along the drilling site has reached 15 meters above the ground surface.

Faiz said the new method would use three rig relief wells placed about 200 meters from the accident site.

"With the new method, we predict the mudflow will stop by mid November. But we still can't be sure of the source of the blow-out."

The team has continued to increase the height of eight ponds established for the mudflow, although two have already collapsed from the surge of mud.

A team from the Surabaya Technology Institute earlier recommended that the ponds only reach a height of two meters. However, even the ponds farthest from the gas drilling site have reached more than five meters high.

Aris Setyadi from the team in charge of the ponds from the Public Works Research Centre said the group planned to extend the range of the ponds, which would mean the permanent relocation of residents in affected areas.

"We also plan to cover the ponds' walls with synthetic materials to make them stronger and to allow water to be separated from the mud."

Water separated from the mud, he added, would be dumped into the sea through a 20-kilometer pipe after it underwent treatment to prevent damage to the marine ecosystem.

"The mud itself will be used for industry," he said, without providing details.

An expert from the Bandung Institute of Technology's structure and mineral affiliation body, Budi Lationo, said the mud could be turned into micro-concrete building material.

The strain of the situation is taking its toll on residents of the hardest-hit Porong area, some of whom have been living in shelters for almost three months.

"Tension among residents is on the rise due to the suspicion that some Muslim clerics and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) leaders there have been receiving money from Lapindo," the head of NU's human resources development and analysis body in Sidoarjo, Ahmad Firdausi Ali, told The Jakarta Post.

Lapindo is linked to the Bakrie family, and Ahmad Firdausi said the rumour pointed to Co-ordinating Minister for the People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie having provided a Rp1 billion payment to clerics from the country's largest Muslim organization.

The clerics were said to have encouraged residents attending their sermons to accept Lapindo's offers of compensation and then handed out Rp100,000 cash to each resident, Ahmad Firdausi alleged.

The head of NU's legal affairs bureau in Sidoarjo, Ahmad Zaini, denied the allegation.

"It's not true that the money was given so that NU could assist Lapindo. The money was given by Ical (Aburizal) as financial assistance during the religious leaders meeting and NU congress in Surabaya a couple of weeks ago," he said.