MAYOR Imdaad Hamid was incensed at the sight of sludge oil polluting the waters of Balikpapan in East Kalimantan. The oil slicks, 3 meters wide, are spread over a 3-kilometer area, blighting the beaches. "I don't want to see the waters dirtied by the oil spills," Hamid says with anger.

Lantung, that's what the locals call the sludge oils. On June 26 last year Hamid led a month-long clean-up operation and ordered oil companies operat