TODAY, the inland sea of mud is twice the size of Central Park in New York. Enough mud to fill 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools spews out every day and has already displaced 50,000 people, submerged homes, factories and schools. The local economy has been devastated by the disaster, although, there are a few minor exceptions such as a local pharmacy that has seen sales soar as people seek treatment for allergies. The stench of sulfur hangs in the air from the grey, watery mud, although authorities deny it is a health hazard. “Business is good,” said a cashier at Porong Pharmacy. Nearby, motorbike taxis charge high prices to drive curious tourists to the towering levees of rock and earth that hold back the mud. Others hawk DVDs of the disaster. But they are a rarity in a district that has seen its economy swallowed up by the expanding mud lake covering about 6.5 square km (2.5 sq mile). The mud has badly affected communications and transport links between East Java and the key port city of Surabaya. A team of leading British, American, Indonesian and Australian scientists, writing in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, said they were certain the gas drilling caused by energy firm PT Lapindo Brantas caused the disaster, as pressurized fluid fractured the surrounding rock. Mud spurted out of cracks instead of the wellhead. Mud volcanoes occur in other parts of Indonesia as well as in places ranging from China to Italy, but the one in Porong is thought to be world's biggest, and there appears to be little that can stop it. Richard Davies, a geologist at Britain's University of Durham who co-wrote the journal article on the causes of the disaster, has said the mud flow could affect the area for years to come and warned the central part of the volcano was collapsing. As well as factories, the mud also destroyed rice paddies and affected shrimp ponds in Sidoarjo regency, famous in Indonesia for its shrimp crackers.
