A South Kalimantan oversight visit produced reclamation figures to two decimal places, and precision like that is the point

Commission III of the South Kalimantan provincial legislature visited two coal operations in Tanah Laut Regency on 11 September 2026: PT Arutmin Indonesia at its Asam Asam site, and PT Jorong Barutama Greston. Mustaqimah, who chairs the commission, said both companies are carrying out reclamation on a continuing basis and that some reclaimed land has already been handed to communities and to regional government.

The figures presented at Jorong Barutama Greston are unusually specific. The company's total reclamation area stands at 4,370.21 hectares. Of that, 1,416.89 hectares has been disturbed and 1,216.84 hectares reclaimed, roughly 85 percent. Watershed rehabilitation covering 2,642.96 hectares is recorded as fully complete.

Hazardous waste is accounted for to five decimal places. Between January 2025 and August 2026 the company recorded 11.90595 tonnes, of which 10.8956 tonnes went to licensed handlers and 1.01035 tonnes remains in dedicated storage.

Ahmad Gazali Rahman, technical head and site director at Jorong Barutama Greston, described the reclamation sequence as land arrangement, topsoil spreading, planting, maintenance, assessment, and handover. Firhansyah of external affairs at Arutmin Asam Asam set out environmental management covering air and water quality monitoring, mine water handling through SPARING and wetland systems, and hazardous waste transport documented by manifest.

Reported is not the same as verified

Sirkularium has argued through this beat that Indonesia measures the revenue side of mining closely and the environmental side loosely. Reclamation is the partial exception, because hectares are counted. What this visit illustrates is the next distinction, which is between a number a company reports and a number somebody has checked.

A legislative commission travelling to a site and taking figures directly is a weaker instrument than an audit, and it would be wrong to present it as more than it is. But it is considerably stronger than a figure arriving in an annual report, and the difference matters. Someone outside the company stood on the land, asked what the number was, and published it under their own name.

The B3 waste accounting is the most telling detail. Tracking 11.90595 tonnes to five decimal places, with the split between what was transferred and what remains in storage, is what a functioning manifest system looks like. Hazardous waste has a chain of custody obligation, documentation follows each consignment, and the result is arithmetic that reconciles. Reclamation has no equivalent chain. It has an area figure and a completion percentage.

Indonesia can tell you where 1.01035 tonnes of hazardous waste is sitting. It cannot tell you, with the same confidence, what 1,216.84 hectares of reclaimed land is now producing.

What the commission asked for

The requests made at the visit are more interesting than the figures, because they point at the mechanism rather than the outcome.

The commission urged the companies to use regional institutions for reclamation guarantees and laboratory testing, naming Bank Kalsel and the provincial ESDM laboratory unit. That is a practical proposal. Reclamation guarantee funds have to be held somewhere, and laboratory verification of soil and water has to be performed by someone. Routing both through provincial institutions keeps the capacity, the fee income, and the data inside the province that carries the environmental load.

The commission also asked that replanting be timed to the planting season rather than to the compliance calendar, and that the objective be restoration of environmental function rather than the fulfilment of an administrative metric. That is the correct instinct, and it is the same argument Sirkularium made in examining PT Timah's decade of reclamation in Bangka Belitung. Seedlings planted in the dry season to close out a reporting year produce a hectare count and very little else.

The valuation that would settle it

The methodology to convert this from area reporting into condition reporting exists in Indonesian regulation and has been tested in court.

Permen LH No. 15 Tahun 2012 values forest ecosystems across direct benefits, indirect services, existence value, and option and bequest value. Permen LH No. 7 Tahun 2014 prices ecological damage, environmental economic loss, and recovery cost. The Ministry of Environment has used the latter to win damages and compulsory restoration exceeding Rp721 billion across four cases, including Rp467.843 billion over a 3,480 hectare fire in Musi Banyuasin. Courts accept these figures.

Applying the same instruments to reclaimed land would answer the question the hectare count leaves open. Has soil organic carbon recovered. Does the water body support fisheries. Is the vegetation self sustaining without replanting. Is anyone earning a living from it. Remote sensing supplies canopy cover and water extent on a repeatable schedule at low marginal cost, and ground sampling supplies the chemistry. For a company that has already reclaimed 1,216.84 hectares over many years, most of the evidence is already in the ground.

Sirkularium's view

Provincial oversight of this kind is worth more than it usually receives credit for, and the commission's focus on mechanism rather than headline numbers deserves recognition. Three observations for government and public institutions.

First, oversight visits should collect a small fixed set of condition indicators alongside the area figures. Canopy cover, soil organic carbon, water quality, and whether the land is in productive use would take little additional effort during a site visit and would convert a compliance check into evidence.

Second, the proposal to route reclamation guarantees and laboratory testing through provincial institutions should be pursued. It builds verification capacity where the mines are, and a provincial laboratory that routinely tests reclamation sites becomes the natural custodian of a condition dataset over time.

Third, the contrast between hazardous waste accounting and reclamation accounting is the clearest available argument for reform. One system tracks grams through a chain of custody. The other reports hectares against a plan. The first model is available, it works, and there is no technical reason reclaimed land could not carry a comparable record.

For operators, the case is a favourable one. A company reporting 85 percent reclamation of disturbed land is making a claim it currently has no way to prove beyond area. An independently verified valuation of land, water, and ecosystem condition turns that claim into evidence, and evidence is what holds up when a reclamation guarantee is assessed or a dispute arises.

What to watch next is whether the commission returns to verify the same sites against the same figures, whether Bank Kalsel and the provincial laboratory take up the roles proposed, and whether condition indicators begin appearing alongside hectares in provincial oversight reporting.