THE poet W.S. Rendra has come up with an apt expression for the Lapindo mud tragedy in Sidoarjo, East Java. He calls it a cultural tragedy: a major incident that has not only submerged villages and closed factories, but also wrecked the environment and inundated a river delta whose formation took centuries, making it older than human civilization.

This week marks one year since the Lapindo mud started pouring out. It began with an operational fa