Indonesia faces environmental time bomb after coal bust

Samarinda, Indonesia

THOUSANDS of mines are closing in Indonesia's tropical coal belt as prices languish and seams run dry. But almost none of the companies has paid its share of billions of dollars owed to repair the badly scarred landscape they have left behind.

Abandoned mine pits dot the bare, treeless hillsides in Samarinda, the capital of East Kalimantan province on Indonesia's part of Borneo island. It is ground zero for a coal boom that made Indonesia the world's biggest exporter of the mineral that fuels power plants. Abandoned mining pits have now become death traps for children who swim in them, and their acidic water is killing nearby rice paddies.

Indonesia has tried, mostly in vain, to get mining companies to keep their promises to clean up the ravaged landscape. But it doesn't even have basic data on who holds the many thousands of mining licences that were handed out during the boom days, officials say. "Nobody was in control," said Dian Patria, who works on natural resources at the country's Corrup…