Twenty Years of Mud: Lapindo's Scars Still Haunt East Java
Two decades after the Lapindo mud volcano engulfed entire villages in Sidoarjo, survivors are still fighting for justice while hot mud continues to flow.
On May 29, 2006, a catastrophic mud eruption began in Porong, Sidoarjo regency, East Java. What started as a gas drilling operation by PT Lapindo Brantas quickly turned into one of Indonesia’s longest-running environmental disasters. Twenty years later, the mud hasn’t stopped — and neither have the consequences.
A Disaster That Never Ended
The eruption, known locally as “Lusi” (Lumpur Sidoarjo), has buried more than 1,100 hectares of land across 19 villages in three subdistricts. Over 572 hectares are now a permanent sea of mud. At least 14 people lost their lives — a worker killed when his digger fell off a levee, and 13 others who died when an underground gas pipeline beneath a holding dam exploded in November 2006.
Tens of thousands of residents were displaced. Homes, factories, rice paddies, schools, and even ancestral graves vanished beneath boiling sludge. White smoke still billows from the center of the mud lake, a visible reminder that the volcano remains active to this day.
The Human Cost, Two Decades On
The economic devastation extends far beyond what any compensation program has covered. According to the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), many survivors have been pushed into informal work — parking attendants, food vendors, motorcycle taxi drivers.
Sastro, a 55-year-old former factory worker, lost both his home and his job when the mud swallowed the facility where he worked. Today he ferries tourists to the site on his motorcycle. “As far as I can tell, things have been really tough ever since the Lapindo incident,” he told the Associated Press.
Imam Shofwan of Jatam described emotional encounters with survivors: “In previous years, they were calmer when talking about their lives, but this year many of them could no longer hold back their emotions.”
Compensation Falls Short
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered PT Lapindo Brantas to pay $420 million in compensation and emergency funding. While the company provided some aid, it was a fraction of the total cost. The burden shifted to the state — in 2025 alone, the Sidoarjo Mudflow Control Center (PPLS) received Rp 287.7 billion in state budget funding to manage the ongoing disaster.
Critics argue that if the incident had been officially recognized as man-made — as scientific research overwhelmingly suggests — the financial responsibility should have remained entirely with the company. Instead, Indonesian taxpayers continue to foot the bill.
Beyond property compensation for houses and rice fields, survivors received nothing for broader losses: damaged public infrastructure, long-term health problems from polluted air, and the bureaucratic nightmare of having their population records erased from villages that no longer exist.
No End in Sight
Every attempted solution has failed. Holding dams, diversion channels, even ambitious plans to stop the flow — none have succeeded. The Environment Ministry says it will prepare a Strategic Environmental Assessment to guide future management efforts, but after two decades, trust in official solutions is thin.
The Lapindo mudflow stands as a grim monument to corporate negligence and institutional failure. Twenty years on, the mud still flows, the bills still pile up, and the people of Sidoarjo are still waiting for accountability that may never come.