Samarinda closes its open dumping chapter and lines up the next one

Deputy Minister of Environment and Deputy Head of the Environmental Control Agency Diaz Hendropriyono spent part of 14 September 2026 walking the working face of TPA Sambutan in Samarinda, East Kalimantan. The visit was framed as a follow up to Ministerial Circular Letter Number 11 of 2026, the guidance issued to governors, regents and mayors on landfill preparedness during extreme heat. What the inspection actually documented was something more durable than a weather advisory. Samarinda has already retired open dumping at its final processing site, and it did so six weeks before the deputy minister arrived.

A zone closes and a cell opens

Zone 1 of TPA Sambutan stopped receiving waste under the open dumping method on 30 July 2026, and Zone 2 began operating the same day. Samarinda Regional Secretary Neneng Chamelia Shanti described the city as having met the central government timetable ahead of the deadline, with Zone 1 moving into its closure and tidying phase. Suwarso, Acting Head of the Samarinda Environment Agency, put the operational change plainly, saying the site is no longer open dumping and has entered the sanitary landfill method.

There is a genuine difference in how the site is labelled, and it is worth stating rather than smoothing over. Samarinda city sources describe Zone 2 as a sanitary landfill. National reporting on the September inspection describes it as a controlled landfill. The two terms sit at different points on the same engineering ladder, and the distinction matters for how the site will be assessed later. Sirkularium reports both attributions as they were made.

What is not in dispute is the physical specification. In Zone 2 waste is placed in layers of 30 to 60 centimetres and covered with 15 to 30 centimetres of soil. Leachate is routed to a wastewater treatment installation rather than allowed to migrate. Methane is collected through a dedicated piping system, which serves the double purpose of managing a greenhouse gas and removing the fuel that makes landfill fires so persistent once they start. Zone 2 covers roughly one hectare and is projected to last about a year at current intake.

What an engineered cell actually costs to run

That one year figure is the most instructive number in the whole story, and it is the one other cities should read most carefully. An engineered cell is not a permanent structure. It is a consumable. Samarinda has bought itself roughly twelve months of compliant disposal, after which another cell must be ready, and the cell after that, in a rolling sequence that continues until upstream reduction or thermal treatment absorbs the volume.

The budget line reflects that reality. Samarinda allocated Rp11.3 billion to landfill operations in 2026, up from Rp6 billion in 2025. Ending open dumping roughly doubled the annual operating cost, because soil cover, compaction discipline, leachate treatment and gas piping all require equipment, materials and staff that open dumping simply does not. This is the fiscal shape of compliance, and it is a shape that many local governments have not yet budgeted for.

The deputy minister's specific technical suggestion at Sambutan fits the same logic of using what the site already has. He asked whether treated water from the site's own wastewater treatment installation could be used to keep the waste mass damp, noting that current conditions make ignition easier.

"Sekarang sedang ada El Nino dan pemanasan global sehingga kebakaran bisa terjadi dengan lebih mudah," said Deputy Minister Diaz Hendropriyono, explaining why routine wetting of the waste mass has moved from good practice to standing guidance.

He also raised the position of waste pickers working in the active zones, saying their safety must be a shared priority. That is a useful signal. Site upgrading and the livelihoods built around a landfill are not separate agendas, and treating them as one is what distinguishes a managed transition from a displacement.

The numbers behind Samarinda Raya

The reason the Sambutan site matters beyond Samarinda is the plant intended to sit next to it. Ten hectares at the site have been reserved for a waste to energy facility, a PSEL, sized in the September reporting at under 1,000 tonnes a day pending the supporting regulatory framework.

Ministry planning figures from April 2026 give the cluster its shape. The Samarinda Raya service area generates approximately 1,034 tonnes of waste a day, made up of roughly 661 tonnes from Samarinda City and 373 tonnes from Kutai Kartanegara Regency. The PSEL planned for that cluster is sized at approximately 710 tonnes a day. The neighbouring Balikpapan Raya cluster generates approximately 560 tonnes a day, 540 from Balikpapan City and 20 from the delimited area around the new capital and part of Kutai Kartanegara, against a planned PSEL capacity of approximately 520 tonnes a day. East Kalimantan Governor Rudy Mas'ud set out the provincial framing at the time.

"Sampah yang selama ini menjadi masalah harus kita ubah menjadi solusi," he said, which translates as waste that has long been a problem must be turned into a solution.

Project definition is still converging, and the public record shows it. In August 2026, Andriansyah, a member of Commission III of the Samarinda Regional House of Representatives, discussed the Sambutan plant as a 13 hectare footprint requiring a minimum of 1,000 tonnes a day to operate efficiently, funded centrally through the Danantara investment management agency, and raised the option of provincial leadership given that the catchment crosses two cities and a regency. Set against the ministry figures of 10 hectares and approximately 710 tonnes a day, the numbers differ in both footprint and feedstock. Sirkularium notes the gap rather than choosing between the sources. Sizing a plant against a catchment that spans multiple jurisdictions is exactly the kind of question that gets settled during preparation, and settling it in public is healthier than settling it late.

Where this sits in the national timetable

The national picture gives Samarinda's twelve months their weight. Speaking in a parliamentary hearing on 7 September 2026, Vinda Damayanti, Deputy for Waste and Hazardous Substances Management at the Ministry of Environment, reported national generation of 144,562 tonnes a day, of which about 25 percent is properly managed. Of the portion that is not, roughly 72 percent ends up at landfills still operating by open dumping. Generation grows about 1.48 percent a year, at approximately 0.48 kilograms per person per day.

The sequence the ministry has set out runs in three steps. End open dumping in 2026. Build facilities at scale in 2027 and bring PSEL capacity into operation. Reach full management by 2028. Samarinda is currently standing between the first and second steps, which is precisely where the timetable expects a well prepared city to be. Circular Letter Number 11 of 2026 belongs to the same effort, asking regional heads and environment agencies to carry out regular wetting, patrol and surveillance, keep water sources and firefighting equipment positioned near the site, and prevent activities that could trigger ignition nearby. Read as maintenance doctrine rather than emergency instruction, it is the operating manual for the cells cities are now building.

Sirkularium's view for government and public institutions

Three implications follow for government and public institutions planning their own transition.

The first is fiscal. Samarinda's move from Rp6 billion to Rp11.3 billion is a usable benchmark for what compliant disposal costs at the scale of a provincial capital. Local governments preparing 2027 budgets should treat the increase as structural rather than as a one time upgrade, and should size it against cell turnover rather than against the year in which the first cell opens.

The second is sequencing. A one hectare cell with a one year life means procurement of the next cell begins almost immediately. Cities that treat the closure of open dumping as a completed project rather than the start of a rolling programme will meet the deadline and then lose the gain. The useful planning unit is the cell pipeline, expressed in years of remaining compliant capacity and reported the way a utility reports reserve margin.

The third is feedstock certainty. The gap between approximately 710 tonnes a day of planned capacity and the 1,000 tonnes a day cited locally as the efficient operating threshold is a commercial question before it is a technical one. Waste to energy financing rests on contracted supply, and contracted supply across Samarinda, Kutai Kartanegara and potentially Balikpapan requires agreements between jurisdictions on tipping arrangements, allocation and cost sharing. Those agreements, not the plant design, are usually the critical path.

What to watch next in East Kalimantan is concrete and near term. Whether the Sambutan PSEL footprint settles at 10 or 13 hectares. Whether the supply framework is signed at city level or elevated to the province, as the local legislature has suggested. Whether Zone 3 preparation at Sambutan begins early enough to avoid a gap when Zone 2 reaches capacity. And whether the treated water proposal from the September inspection becomes standing site procedure, recorded and audited, rather than a suggestion made on a walkthrough. Each of those is small on its own. Together they determine whether a deadline met in July 2026 becomes a system that holds.