“Every afternoon, there is always a foul smell like human waste around the Taman Sentosa Cikarang, South Bekasi housing complex,” wrote one commenter who reviewed the site on Google Maps in 2024. “Shut this factory immediately.”1
On October 18, 2025, a reporter for The Outlaw Ocean Project visited PT Pahala Bahari Nusantara. The security guards at the front gate did not allow him to enter, so he spoke with a few local residents a block away from the plant. One said he worked for the company, and the smell when the plant was operating was unbearable. During the dry season, piles of trash accumulated outside the plant, which were swept into the river when it rained. They watched a container truck deliver fish to the plant. The reporter asked how many went to the plant each day, and the worker answered that there were too many to count. The reporter spoke with five other local residents who said the stench from the plant on working days was horrendous. When the reporter walked down to the river bordering the neighborhood, the water was the same sickly gray color as the moat surrounding the plant with mountains of plastic trash. The owner of a food stall down the street led the reporter to a pathway behind the plant, where a small pipe discharged putrid wastewater into a narrow ravine leading to the river, which had turned black. The ground was saturated with foul-smelling mud. The owner of the food stall said the pipe discharged wastewater from the plant into the river.2
PT Pahala Bahari Nusantara did not respond to a request for comment.3