Water demand to increase by 44% in the next four years

Water company PT PAM Jaya predicted that demand for clean water in Jakarta would increase by 44 percent in the next four years, from 18,000 to 26,000 liters per second.

Company head Maurits Napitupulu said on Monday that unless real efforts were made to cut the bureaucratic red tape that hampered new water projects, the city would likely face a clean-water crisis.

The city government has touted two solutions to the problem, first, by building a 60-kilometer pipeline from the Jatiluhur dam in Purwakarta, West Java, to the city and, second, the construction of ultra-filtration water centers that would filter water from the city’s heavily polluted rivers and turn them into potable water.

When completed, the pipeline is expected to deliver 5,000 liters of clean water per second, while the ultra-filtration plant could deliver 4,000 liters per second.

The city has decided that the plants could be built on the banks of the West Flood Canal and the Cengkareng Drain.

Maurits said in March that tenders for the ultra-filtration plants should have been completed in July or August so that they could be operational early next year.

But the project is now in limbo as the Public Works Ministry is yet to issue a permit for the project.

“Teams from the Bandung Institute of Technology and the University of Indonesia have completed their feasibility study, and we have found partners who have expressed interest in the project. But without the permit we cannot proceed with the project,” Maurits told reporters.

He said that once the project was complete it could provide water supply for the northern part of Jakarta, where drought usually hit the hardest.

The Public Works Ministry’s director general of water resources, Mochammad Amron said that it would take a while before the ministry could issue a permit.

“We still need to find out the amount of the water debit [of the West Flood Canal and the Cengkareng Drain], both in dry and rainy seasons. If the debit is too low, especially in the dry season, there’s no way we will issue the permit.”

Maurits rejected the statement, arguing that the water debit of both the West Flood Canal and the Cengkareng Drain were 7,000 liters per second and 8,000 liters per second respectively in the dry season, which was more than enough for the new plants.

“The ultra-filtration water centers will only need around 1,000 liters per second, so the waterways won’t run dry,” he said.

On the Jatiluhur-Jakarta pipeline project, Amron said that it would likely be conducted as a public-private partnership. “The government is still looking for interested private parties to join the project,” he said.

Governor Fauzi Bowo said in November 2009 that the project would likely start in 2011. (mim)