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Rotterdam to work with city on floods, reclamation
After sending 12 civil servants to study in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the Jakarta administration is seeking to further cooperate with the Dutch city on water management and land reclamation
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fter sending 12 civil servants to study in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the Jakarta administration is seeking to further cooperate with the Dutch city on water management and land reclamation.
Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama said that Jakarta sought to learn from and imitate Rotterdam in terms of water management, as Rotterdam had hundreds of years of experience in dealing with flooding.
'It is easier for us to learn from an experienced city. That way we can not only learn from their achievements but also learn from their mistakes,' Ahok told a press conference in Central Jakarta on Tuesday.
The city administration sent 12 civil servants to Rotterdam last year to be trained on integrated urban water management.
Ahok went on to say that the city administration wished to cooperate with Rotterdam to develop artificial islands off the north coast of Jakarta. He said that PT Agung Podomoro Land, whose subsidiary PT Muara Wisesa Samudra is set to develop one of the planned islands, would cooperate with Rotterdam-based contracting company Van Oord in developing the island.
Van Oord, a company which specializes in land reclamation and dredging, is also currently involved in Egypt's Suez Canal expansion project along with other firms.
'We also want to study Rotterdam's reclamation business model and its technology. I will visit Rotterdam next month and I expect to learn a lot from the visit,' Ahok said.
Rotterdam has developed the Maasvlakte 2, an expansion of Maasvlakte harbor, through land reclamation. The development of Maasvlakte 2 reclaimed 2,000 hectares of land.
Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb said that he would offer help to Jakarta as the city was experienced in handling floods and land reclamation. 'Our experience with flooding is 400 years. So it's not easy to say we'll start tomorrow and finish in a year. It's a very big endeavor with long-term thinking,' Ahmed said during the same occasion.
He went on to say that Rotterdam had developed many technologies in dealing with rain and sea water to prevent flooding, and processing dirty water into consumable drinking water.
He said Rotterdam would share its experience regarding the best business model that Jakarta could adopt in land reclamation. Aboutaleb acknowledged that Rotterdam, like Jakarta, had also faced environmental issues in developing the land reclamation.
'It is a very complex process. It's not only the government but you also need developers to use the land, you need infrastructure like highways and railways. You also need telecommunication systems, so that's very complicated,' Aboutaleb said.
Thus, he said, Rotterdam learned that the city administration must bring all stakeholders together in order to make a good and accurate decision.
'We need to decide from the very beginning who is going to pay for what. What I learned is that private businesses think that they are there for the profit and the government for the costs, but I don't like that. So the question is how to bring both responsibilities together to say to the private parties that they may develop the island but also take care of the infrastructure,' said Aboutaleb.
