Peraturan Menteri Lingkungan Hidup 5/2014 (Peraturan Menteri Lingkungan Hidup Nomor 5 Tahun 2014 tentang Baku Mutu Air Limbah) is an Indonesian ministerial regulation that sets national wastewater quality standards (baku mutu air limbah) for industrial, commercial, health-care and domestic activities. It was signed by the Minister of Environment on 15 October 2014 and took effect on its promulgation on 25 October 2014.^[1] It is the base instrument of the effluent-standards layer described at wastewater and sanitation regulation in Indonesia, and is catalogued in the CRPG registry as Permen LHK 5/2014 although it predates the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

The regulation consolidated twenty earlier sector-specific decrees and regulations into a single instrument covering forty-six categories of business or activity, each with its own annex of limits, and a default standard for activities that have no specific one.^[2][3][4] It is framed as a national reference: governors may set stricter standards on the basis of a scientific study of the receiving water, and regents and mayors must apply the governor's standards when issuing wastewater discharge permits.^[5][6][7] It also imposes monthly monitoring and quarterly reporting on every regulated activity.^[8]

Several of its annexes have since been replaced or revoked. The domestic, hotel and part of the health-facility standards were taken over by a dedicated domestic wastewater regulation in 2016, the tannery standard was replaced in 2018, and the textile standard was amended in 2019 and revoked in 2025.^{[9][10][11][12]}

¶ Background

The regulation states in its preamble that it was made to implement Pasal 20 of Undang-Undang 32/2009 on environmental protection and management, the statute that establishes environmental quality standards. Its legal bases also include Government Regulation 82/2001 on water quality management and water pollution control, Government Regulation 19/1999 on marine pollution, Government Regulation 27/2012 on environmental permits, and Permen LH 1/2010 on the procedure for water pollution control.^[13]

Before 2014, industrial effluent limits were spread across separate instruments issued over two decades. Pasal 17 revoked twenty of them on the regulation's entry into force, beginning with the 1995 ministerial decrees on effluent from industry, hotels and hospitals, and including the 2004–2010 regulations for fertiliser, abattoirs, fruit and vegetable processing, fisheries, upstream petrochemicals, terephthalic acid, seaweed, ceramics, coconut, meat and soybean processing, traditional medicine (jamu), cattle and pig farming, cooking oil, sugar, and cigarettes and cigars.^[4:1]

¶ Scope and standards

Pasal 3 ayat (1) lists the activities whose standards the regulation sets, from metal plating and galvanising, tanneries, palm oil, rubber and tapioca through pulp and paper, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, fertiliser and textiles, to hotels, health-care facilities, abattoirs and domestic wastewater.^[2:1] The domestic category covered residential, office and commercial areas and apartments, restaurants with a floor area above 1,000 square metres, and dormitories with at least 100 occupants.^[2:2] The standards are set on the basis of commonly used treatment technology, the assimilative capacity of the environment in the area of the activity, or both, expressed as a maximum concentration or pollution load, and are contained in the annexes.^[2:3]

Several categories are subdivided. Fruit and vegetable processing and fisheries processing have separate standards for single-process plants, combined processing, and centralised treatment in an industrial estate; sugar mills are graded by capacity, at less than 2,500 tonnes of cane a day, 2,500 to 10,000 tonnes, and more than 10,000 tonnes; cigarette and cigar producers are graded by whether their wastewater comes from wet or dry primary processing and whether it is mixed with domestic wastewater; and health-care facilities are distinguished by whether they treat domestic wastewater, hazardous (B3) wastewater, or both.^[14] Lead-acid battery plants operating when the regulation was issued were given an existing-plant standard, with the new-plant standard applying to new units and becoming mandatory for existing plants within three years of promulgation.^[15]

An activity with no specific standard falls under a default table in two classes (golongan). Class I applies where the receiving water is a class I river, or where untreated wastewater contains less than 1,500 ppm biochemical oxygen demand and less than 3,000 ppm chemical oxygen demand; class II applies where those thresholds are exceeded and the receiving water is not a class I river.^[3:1] Such an activity may reduce the parameters it tests for if its effluent stays below 25 per cent, or its influent below 75 per cent, of the default limits over a prescribed series of analyses by an accredited laboratory.^[16]

¶ Role of regional governments

The regulation describes itself as a reference for governors setting stricter standards and for the authors of environmental impact assessments (Amdal), environmental management and monitoring plans (UKL-UPL) and discharge studies deriving more specific or stricter limits from local conditions.^[5:1] Governors must ensure that the carrying and assimilative capacity of the environment is not exceeded, through a scientific study carried out at least once every five years that covers, among other matters, the assimilative capacity of the water, the characteristics of the wastewater and the activity, and a recommended standard. Where the study finds capacity not exceeded, the governor adopts the national values; where it finds capacity exceeded, the governor must set more specific or stricter ones.^[6:1]

Regents and mayors must apply the governor's standards when issuing permits to discharge wastewater to a water source, unless an environmental document or discharge study yields a stricter one. Where the governor has not acted, they must use the stricter limit derived from such a document or study; for discharges to the sea the Minister issues the permit on the same basis.^[7:1][17] The national standards themselves are to be reviewed at least once every five years in the light of assimilative capacity and improved technology.^[18]

¶ Monitoring and reporting

Every regulated activity must monitor its wastewater quality at least once a month against the parameters set in its discharge permit, and report the results at least every three months to the permit issuer, with copies to the Minister and the governor. The report records daily discharge volume, actual daily raw material use or production, the concentration of each parameter and the calculated pollution load, in the format set out in the final annex.^[8:1]

¶ Amendments and partial revocation

The Minister of Environment and Forestry revoked three annexes in 2016: Permen LHK 68/2016 on domestic wastewater standards withdrew the hotel standard (Lampiran XLIII), the domestic-treatment standard for health-care facilities (Lampiran XLIV part A) and the domestic standard (Lampiran XLVI).^[9:1] Domestic wastewater has since been governed by Permen LH 11/2025, which revoked the 2016 regulation.^[19]

The regulation was then amended twice. Permen LHK 21/2018 replaced the tannery standard in Lampiran II, citing a mismatch between the 2014 limits and conditions in the field.^[10:1] Permen LHK 16/2019 replaced the textile standard in Lampiran XLII and inserted a Pasal 16A giving operating textile mills with more than 100 cubic metres of wastewater a day between three months and one year to meet the new limits for colour, suspended solids, and oxygen demand.^[11:1] Both the textile annex and Pasal 16A were revoked by Permen LH 12/2025, a stand-alone textile effluent regulation signed on 4 September 2025.^[12:1]

CRPG's regulatory tracker published an analysis of the regulation, as the master standard for industrial and commercial wastewater, on 26 November 2025.^[20]

¶ See also

• Peraturan Pemerintah 22/2021
• Permen LHK 5/2018
• Permen LH 3/2010
• Environmental approval in Indonesia

¶ External links

• CRPG: Master Wastewater Quality Standards for Industrial and Commercial Activities: PERMENLHK 5/2014 (crpg.id, 26 November 2025) (free sign-in required on crpg.id)

¶ References