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Indonesia Mining Water Management: The Drainage, Settling-Pond and Acid-Drainage Duties on an IUP Holder

At an Indonesian mine, water is not an engineering afterthought — it is a set of named duties under the good-mining-practice rulebook. A holder must first study the hydrology, hydrogeology and rock geochemistry, then design drainage channels, settling ponds and pumps to a fixed rainfall standard, and must know whether its waste rock will generate acid drainage before it can be allowed to treat it. This explainer sets out the exact water duties under Permen ESDM No. 26 of 2018 and Kepmen ESDM No. 1827 K/30/MEM/2018 — and why a breach of them is a licence risk before it is an environmental one.

Flooded former kaolin mine, Belitung, Indonesia. Photo: Ayufib, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Indonesia Mining Water Management: The Drainage, Settling-Pond and Acid-Drainage Duties on an IUP Holder

At an Indonesian mine, water is not an engineering afterthought — it is a set of named duties under the good-mining-practice rulebook. A holder must first study the hydrology, hydrogeology and rock geochemistry, then design drainage channels, settling ponds and pumps to a fixed rainfall standard, and must know whether its waste rock will generate acid drainage before it can be allowed to treat it. This explainer sets out the exact water duties under Permen ESDM No. 26 of 2018 and Kepmen ESDM No. 1827 K/30/MEM/2018 — and why a breach of them is a licence risk before it is an environmental one.