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Jakarta Post

Severe drought leads to water crises across Central Java

The drought that has afflicted Central Java for the last three months has created domestic and irrigation water crises in several parts of the province

Agus Maryono and Yuli Tri Suwarni (The Jakarta Post)
Banyumas/Bandung
Thu, September 15, 2011

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Severe drought leads to water crises across Central Java

T

he drought that has afflicted Central Java for the last three months has created domestic and irrigation water crises in several parts of the province.

During a recent visit, The Jakarta Post observed that many rice fields in the regencies of Cilacap, Banyumas, Purbalingga and Banjarnegara were left dry and uncultivated due to a lack of irrigation water.

“It’s impossible to plant rice during a drought like this. Rice plants cannot grow without water,” Sankarjo, a resident of Kroya in Cilacap, told the Post on Wednesday.

Sankarjo said he would have only a single harvest this year unless it rained before October. Three harvests were the norm under normal conditions, he added.

The drought also threatens several villages that rely exclusively on local tap water companies for clean water.

The Banyumas regency administration, for example, said that villages in dozens of sub-districts faced serious water crises.

The administration’s community welfare division head, Khaerul Fuadi, said Banyumas regency could only deliver a limited amount of clean water to the sub-districts afflicted by the drought due to limited supplies and budget.

“This year the administration has allocated only Rp 25 million [US$2,875] to supply clean water to all the sub-districts in need,” Khaerul said.

“This is quite far from being sufficient,” he added.

In Cilacap, 78 sub-districts in 13 out of the regency’s 24 districts have been afflicted by the drought.

A water crisis has also been reported in 54 sub-districts in Purbalingga regency and 97 in Banjarnegara regency.

Separately, drought conditions have significantly decreased water levels at West Java’s three major reservoirs that supply irrigation water to the province and clean water to Greater Jakarta tap water companies.

The provincial water resources management agency (PSDA) said that, barring a severe and prolonged drought, the decrease would not affect Greater Jakarta’s domestic water supply or the province’s irrigation water supply.

West Java PSDA operations and management chief Endang Kusnadi said the water balance of the Citarum River that was accommodated by the Saguling, Cirata and Juanda (Jatiluhur) dams was still good.

“Until the end of this year, based on our calculations, we will have a water reserve from Citarum and other local resources of up to 981.4 million cubic meters. This is on the condition that the drought is not worsened or prolonged,” Endang said.

West Java PSDA chief Deddi Mulyadi said that two cloud seeding operations were conducted in February and March in anticipation of a drought, although the operations did not fully cover Citarum River’s upper stream areas, as planned.

“Some fell over other regions,” Deddi said in Bandung on Tuesday, attributing the problem to changes in wind direction.

Deddi also said that cloud cover was currently too thin to support further cloud seeding.

The impact of the drought on agriculture in West Java was not yet severe, Dedey said, with only 8,000 of the province’s 25,000 drought-stricken hectares of rice fields failing to produce harvests.

“That is only 0.04 percent of the province’s total planting area of some 1.9 million hectares,” Deddi said.

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