Counter-impact analysis

I began this research with Poso Energy’s ANDAL (Environmental Impact Analysis Report) for what the company calls the “Poso River Improvement” (2019), which legitimise the lake’s outlet dredging as an improvement. However, this involved not only removing the riverbed but also enacting socio-ecological violence on the communities living there. This part of the investigation focuses on the dredging of the Poso lake outlet, where 2.5 million cubic meters were removed in 2019. This marked the point when Poso Energy’s socioenvironmental violence intensified, especially due to the floodgate operation in 2019, which submerged 426 hectares of farmland (266 hectares claimed by the Indigenous community). None of this was analysed in the ANDAL. Of the 185 pages, most describe the short-term technical effects of dredging and the empty promise of developing Poso Lake’s outlet area as a tourism destination.

In my research, the only ANDAL available were the Poso River Improvement in 2019 and AMDAL for PLTA Poso 4. For PLTA Poso 2, the first infrastructure built, no document was found. I tried to obtain it through several NGOs but failed. I contacted the company and received no response. What is striking is that a megaproject of this scale has no master plan and has never held any public consultation or informed the communities. Several community testimonies describe the documents as secret.

In this research, the absence of the report itself reveals the violence in the community. That absence shaped my method, where I work from the missing planning record and see its withholding as an act of countermapping.