T

he Jakarta administration assured the public that the Sedyatmo toll road — the capital’s main thoroughfare to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport — would not be flooded during the peak of this year’s rainy season, which is expected to be worse than usual.

Governor Fauzi Bowo said on Thursday that the Tanjungan pump station located on the north side of the toll road in North Jakarta would remain in operation to keep the road free from inundation.

“I guarantee the toll road will not become flooded again,” Fauzi said during an inspection at the station.

The station has three screw pumps with a total capacity of draining 12 cubic meters of water per second.

The pump station manages water drainage across a total area of 385 hectares.

“Rain water accumulating on the toll road will quickly be drained by these pumps,” Fauzi said.

In 2008, a three-kilometer stretch of the Sedyatmo toll road was inundated after heavy rainfall. Nearly 1,000 flights were delayed or diverted and 259 were canceled.

The central government said the incident was primarily caused by the surrounding land’s inability to absorb excess water.

The Transportation Ministry’s toll-road operator PT Jasa Marga then decided to build elevated roads on both sides of the road as additional toll road lanes. Jasa Marga also built a long storage area along the road to store rain water and prevent it from flooding the road.

Government agencies have warned that the capital will likely be hit by major floods during the peak of the rainy season in January.

The National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) said the city’s rivers and waterways did not have the capacity to drain water from torrential rain quickly enough to prevent flooding.

The BNPB said all areas in the capital are vulnerable to flooding when 300 to 400 millimeters of rain per hour hit the city, much higher than the normal rate of between 50 and 100 millimeters per hour.

Jakarta has a total of 13 rivers and two flood canals passing through the capital as the main channels to drain water but they only have the capacity to drain between 70 and 80 percent of rain water during downpours.

The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) also warned that residents in northern areas of Jakarta would face a double threat of flooding due to high tides, which were predicted to arrive between Jan. 10 and 11 as well as between Jan. 22 and 23.

The high tides will result in parts of northern Jakarta being inundated to a depth of between 1.2 and 2 meters.

Around 40 percent of the city’s total area of 650 square kilometers is below sea level. The situation is made worse with only 9 percent of Jakarta designated as green areas, which help to absorb rain water.

Separately on Friday, the City Public Works chief Ery Basworo reiterated that all facilities and infrastructure for flood management were at the ready.

“Pump stations across the city are on 24-hour standby. Whenever intense rain hits, all pumps will be ready to suck the water out of the streets and into the waterways, which will transport it to the sea,” Ery said.

The worst flooding in Jakarta’s history inundated about 70 percent of the city in 2007, killing at least 57 people and driving more than 450,000 from their homes.

The agency claimed to have made significant improvements during the past five years, saying that should there be a repeat of the extreme weather experienced in 2007, massive flooding would not occur.