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City told to learn hard way to solve water woes
The city administration has to take a long, hard look at more alternative, sustainable approaches to overcoming the city’s water scarcity and other water-related problems, experts say
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he city administration has to take a long, hard look at more alternative, sustainable approaches to overcoming the city’s water scarcity and other water-related problems, experts say.
“One of the alternatives is to make full use of the capital’s 13 major rivers, such as Ciliwung and Cipinang rivers, which could serve as potential raw water resources,” hydro-geologist Fatchy Muhammad, told The Jakarta Post recently.
However, another expert, Wijanto Hadipuro, warned that business-wise, focusing on obtaining water resources from the rivers would be costly, as most rivers were very polluted.
Wijanto suggested the problem could be solved if tap water operators, as in many other countries, were responsible not only for water management, but also for providing comprehensive sanitation solutions.
“Political will and a paradigm shift in water management is needed to deal with the city’s new risks and uncertainties in water provision,” said Fatchy from the Indonesian Water Society.
Fatchy said building catchment areas such as water reservoirs for rainfall could also serve as an effective supplement to secure water in the future.
Jakarta is facing the issue of water security on an unprecedented scale, as supplies of raw water from Jatiluhur dam in West Java, which has been constant at 17,800 liters per second since 1998, is barely sufficient to meet the clean water demand of the city’s ever-increasing population.
Fatchy estimated the city needed an average of 200 liters of water per day per person, or the equivalent of 730 billion liters per year for its approximately 10 million residents — a volume that is still far from its current total annual water supply of 561.34 billion liters.
He also explained that Jakarta’s annual rainfall of 2,500 millimeters per year, if contained in reservoirs, could serve as a new resource that could be managed by the city’s water tap operators.
Jakarta still highly dependent on water from Jatiluhur dam, managed by state-owned enterprise PT Perum Jasa Tirta (PJT) II, which has been recently blamed by the city’s private water tap operators for failing to provide good quality water and for its residents.
Wijanto, who is also an economist and hydrologist from the Amrta Institute for Water Literacy, said that in order to secure good quality water from the dam, the government and the city administration needed to fix and clean the headwaters of the Citarum River in West Java.
Highly toxic pollutants such as total coliform bacteria, which is present in the environment and in the feces of all warm-blooded animals and humans, has been found in the river.
He also believed that Reverse Osmosis (RO) technology and recycling industrial waste could provide another alternative water source.
“We heard that RO was very expensive in the past, but I met with some people from the Bandung Institute of Technology who said the high-priced RO membranes could be substituted with cheaper materials, therefore, making the technological costs very competitive,” he said.
RO technology makes clean water by forcing seawater through plastic membranes with microscopic pores.
The membranes extract dissolved salts, while excess silt is removed with chemicals. (tsy)
