The Kapuas River is a river in the Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

n part of Borneo

Borneo

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....

 island. It originates in the Müller Mountain Range at the center of the island and flows south until merging with the Barito River

Barito River

Barito is a 890 km long river, located in South Kalimantan, Indonesia. It originates in the Muller Mountain Range from where it flows southward into the Java Sea...

 and discharging into the Java Sea

Java Sea

The Java Sea is a large shallow sea on the Sunda Shelf. It was formed as sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age. The Java Sea lies between the Indonesian islands of Borneo to the north, Java to the south; Sumatra to the west, and Sulawesi to the east...

. It should be distinguished from another Kapuas River

Kapuas River

The Kapuas River is a river in the Indonesian part of Borneo island, at the geographic center of Maritime Southeast Asia. At in length, it is the longest river of Indonesia and one of the world's longest island rivers...

, which starts on the other side of the same mountain range in central Borneo, but flows to the west and empties to the South China Sea

South China Sea

The South China Sea is a marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan of around...

.

The river is about 600 km (372.8 mi) long and up to 6 m (19.7 ft) deep. It flows through marshy region rich in tropical forests, nearly parallel to the Barito River, and merges with the latter about 60 km from the Java Sea coast, within the town of Kualakapuas (lit. mouth of Kapuas in Indonesian

Indonesian language

Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....

). Between 1880 and 1890, a 30 km long canal was dug by the Dutch colonizers between the Kapuas and Barito river for agricultural purposes. The Kapuas River is narrow (about 50 m) and very winding in its upper stream. It straightens and widens up to 450 m in its lower reaches. There, it contains several elongated islands (shorter than 2 km). Its discharge rate varies through the year reaching the maximum in the peak of rainy seasons in April and November. The river is navigable up to 420 km² from the mouth. Significant deposits of coal and gold were discovered upstream. Because of the lack of infrastructure, the gold is mined mostly by primitive methods, with only one commercial mine on the river, and the coal is not explored yet. Several bridges crossing the Kapuas River. One of them, located near the village Lungku Layang, Timpah , Kapuas District , Central Kalimantan

Central Kalimantan

Central Kalimantan is a province of Indonesia, one of four in Kalimantan - the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. Its provincial capital is Palangka Raya.The province has a population of just over 2.2 million at the 2010 Census...

, collapsed on 3 April 2009 killing one and injuring 6 people working under the bridge.

Barito Bridge

The Barito Bridge is the third longest cable stayed span in Indonesia with 230 meters length after Kutai Kartanegara Bridge

Kutai Kartanegara Bridge

-References:...

 (270 meters) and Mamberamo Bridge (235 meters), but the Kutai Kartanegara Bridge has collapsed in November 2011.