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Water crisis overshadows Jakarta
Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo has urged tap water operators to resume normal supply as a shortage is forcing affected residents to rely on neighbors and pay extra costs to access clean water
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akarta Governor Fauzi Bowo has urged tap water operators to resume normal supply as a shortage is forcing affected residents to rely on neighbors and pay extra costs to access clean water.
For the last three days, Suryadi, 80, from Petamburan, Central Jakarta, and his family of 11 have been forced to bathe at their neighbor’s house, which has access to groundwater.
“We even pay for gallons of water for cooking,” Suryadi said.
In Palmerah subdistrict, Central Jakarta, Rusminah has to carry pails of water for her daily needs, as the water piped to her house is muddy.
“I fill tubs with muddy water and wait for the mud to settle before using the water for cooking,” she said.
Mud carried by floods washed into Curug dam in West Java, the raw water reservoir for Jakarta, contaminating and disrupting much of the city’s tap water supply.
Governor Fauzi Bowo said Friday he had pushed city tap water operators PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja) and PT Aetra Air Jakarta to accelerate the distribution of clean water.
“I have urged the two companies to resume normal services starting Saturday evening and Monday consecutively,” he said.
On Friday, the city also saw the replacement of the director of city-owned water company PAM Jaya Haryadi Priyohutomo by Maurits Napitupulu, previously head of the city’s Energy and Industry Agency.
After his installment by city secretary Muhayat, Maurits refused to comment on the water crisis.
Governor Fauzi said problems of raw water supplied from Jatiluhur dam in West Java was beyond the administration’s control as it was managed by state-owned Perum Jasa Tirta II, but he asked Aetra to investigate the damage of its pump to prevent it from happening again.
Jakarta gets water from Jatiluhur dam, which is sourced from Tarum Barat River.
Aetra, which supplies East Jakarta, suffered damage to its pump machine in Pulogadung water installation, causing a 40 percent drop in production capacity from the usual 8,700 liters per second, while PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja) announced that 40 percent of its 412,000 connections would be
disturbed.
Hydrogeologist Fatchy Muhammad said the city should reduce its dependency on water from Jatiluhur dam and start turning its attention to a more sustainable approach like building a number of absorption lakes to make water reservoirs.
“The lakes will help absorbing the potential rain water into the land, which would create water source downstream,” he said.
He said it was also possible to build a water treatment plant on certain reservoirs, so operators could have another source of raw water.
Fatchy calculated if half of the city’s 661.52-square-kilometer land were filled with many absorption wells and lakes, Jakarta’s annual rainfall of 2,500 millimeters per year could cater to around 10 million people in the city, each of whom need around 73 liters of water a day.
In 2002, he tried to locate 20 strategic plots of unused land to build absorption lakes in the catchment areas of 10 big rivers — Sunter, Cipinang, Buaran, Ciliwung, Mampang, Krukut, Grogol, Pesanggrahan, Angke and Ciater.
He said at the time, the plots varied from 4 hectares to 100 hectares.
“The most important thing is, the city should draw up policy on potential land for lakes in its spatial planning, so massive real estate development doesn’t come ahead of water reserves,” he said.
