W

ith Deputy Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama having recently returned from South Korea, the city administration says it is evaluating its planned seawall project.

During Ahok's visit to South Korea to attend the opening ceremony of the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, Ahok visited the Saemangeum seawall'located on the southwest coast of the Korean peninsula'to study its structure.

The South Korean government has expressed its intention to take part in the giant seawall project off the capital's north coast.

'We are being prudent. The condition in Korea is different than in Jakarta. We don't want that [the reservoir created from seawall construction] to become a huge pool of waste, so we will evaluate it,' Jakarta Development Planning Agency (Bappeda) head Andi Baso told reporters after a leadership meeting at City Hall earlier this week.

Andi said South Korea and Jakarta faced different challenges.

'[South Korea] only has one river, so when the sea level rises or recedes it will flush. It is different here,' Andi said. Jakarta has 13 major rivers, which are overseen by the central government, and all are heavily polluted.

Ahok said that the seawall should not function as a mere reservoir.

'[South Korea] only has one river but the water is quite polluted. We have 13 rivers to normalize first,'
he said.

Ahok said that the capital's seawall was expected to have a slightly different function to that in South Korea.

'[Saemangeum] was expected to protect [the land] from strong waves, while in Jakarta we expect the seawall to protect the land from floods [due to the city's low-laying land]. In this sense, our case is closer to that of Rotterdam [the Netherlands],' he said, pointing out that he would visit Rotterdam in the near future to study its seawall.

Ahok, however, praised the technical aspects of the Saemangeum seawall project. 'The technical aspects were good [...] they are experienced after all. We might work with them on that aspect,' he said.

University of Indonesia hydrologist Firdaus Ali said that South Korea and Indonesia had different aims in building a seawall.

'Korea built the seawall in a relatively short time. It aimed to expand land, while the Netherlands had to build a seawall to control the sea surface. It was necessary to develop commercial areas.

'I guess Pak Ahok decided that Jakarta could not apply Korea's approach due our land surface condition,' he said.

According to Firdaus, the ground surface in Jakarta subsides at a rate of 11 centimeters per year while the sea level rises by up to 6 millimeters per year.

'By 2040, when construction of the giant seawall is expected to be completed, 97.6 percent of North Jakarta will be below sea level,' he told The Jakarta Post.

Despite the city administration and the central government's plan to build the seawall and 17 artificial islets off the capital's north coast, experts and urban activists have warned that the plan would cause more harm than good, arguing that the project ' which will involve a reclamation project ' will not solve the main problems faced by the capital such as over-exploitation of groundwater, among others.