Documentary suggests causes are clear as mud

In an event featuring a Javanese gamelan ensemble, the Arizona State University (ASU) launched a documentary film on Friday taking a comprehensive look at the mudflow disaster that has wreaked havoc in the East Java town of Sidoarjo.

MudMax, produced by London-based Immodicus SA, premiered before a limited audience, including journalists from Indonesia, and was followed by a discussion with experts who are still perplexed about how to stop the mudflow which began in May 2006

The Sidoarjo mud, or popularly referred to as Lusi (after its Indonesian abbreviation) covers an ever expanding area and has displaced more than 40,000 people, caused extensive damage to economic infrastructure and is one enormous and expanding environmental disaster.

ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration director Kip Hodges said the university was very keen on helping society deal with immense challenges, and feels that Lusi posed a very profound and unique problem for Indonesia.

The gamelan number was performed by a 10-person orchestra comprising students and faculty, including top volcanologist Jonathan Fink, and was directed by ASU music ethnologist Ted Solis. To create an Indonesian ambience, the musicians and most of the invitees, wore batik.

The 47-minute documentary touched on the controversy about the cause of the mudflow, with one camp blaming human error in oil and gas drilling activities and another insisting it was triggered by a powerful earthquake in Yogyakarta, a few hundred kilometers to the southwest, two days earlier.

The debate has become academic, literally among scientists.

The House of Representatives, following an inquiry could not find any evidence linking the disaster to the drilling activities by PT Lapindo Brantas, owned by politically well-connected Aburizal Bakrie. The Supreme Court also made a similar ruling and the police have closed its criminal investigation.

Among the panelists, Tom Casadevall of the US Geological Survey said scientists were now more concerned about what to do with the mud that will likely continue to flow for several decades, and the prospect of land subsiding in the area.