The Waeapo River is a river which flows on the island of

Buru Buru (formerly spelled Boeroe, Boro, or Bouru) is the third largest island within the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. It lies between the Banda Sea to the south and Seram Sea to the north, west of Ambon and Seram islands. The island belongs to Ma ...

, Maluku, Indonesia. It is one of the main rivers of the island, draining towards the

Banda Sea The Banda Sea ( id, Laut Banda, pt, Mar de Banda, tet, Tasi Banda) is one of four seas that surround the Maluku Islands of Indonesia, connected to the Pacific Ocean, but surrounded by hundreds of islands, including Timor, as well as the Halma ...

in the northeast of the island.

History

Following the communist purges in the 1960s, thousands of political prisoners were incarcerated in Buru, and they were mostly placed around the Waeapo River valley. This was partly due to the valley's topographic features, being surrounded by continuous steep cliffs. As the river was navigable, it was used to transport prisoners inland. The lower Waeapo valley later became a destination for Javanese transmigrants, with over 20,000 settlers moving into settlements on the Waeapo River's floodplain and establishing rice fields. The Waeapo valley remains the concentration of nearly all rice agriculture in Buru. Since 2012, due to gold mining activities in a nearby mountain, mercury has begun leaching into the river, although 2015 measurements indicated acceptable levels. Further illegal gold mining continued to pollute the river and its tributaries with mercury. In August 2020, dam construction began in the river to provide water for irrigation systems and an expected electrical production of 8 MW.

Geography

The river valley forms an

alluvial plain An alluvial plain is a largely flat landform created by the deposition of sediment over a long period of time by one or more rivers coming from highland regions, from which alluvial soil forms. A floodplain is part of the process, being the sma ...

in the northeast of the island, which comprised the Waeapo district of

Buru Regency Buru Regency is a regency of Maluku province, Indonesia. When it was first created on 4 October 1999, the regency encompassed the entire island (plus outlying islands, of which Amalau is the largest); but on 24 June 2008 the southern 40% of the i ...

. It is the largest alluvial plain in Buru, with a basin area of around 1,800 square kilometers. It drains into the Kayeli Bay in the northeast of the island, which is connected to the

. The river floods annually during

monsoon A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal oscil ...

season. The river's mouth is a

mangrove swamp Mangrove forests, also called mangrove swamps, mangrove thickets or mangals, are productive wetlands that occur in coastal intertidal zones. Mangrove forests grow mainly at tropical and subtropical latitudes because mangroves cannot withstand fre ...

, the largest on the island.

References

{{Rivers of Maluku (province) Rivers of Maluku (province) Buru