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span class="inline inline-left">Waste not: Women wash rice and clean clothes using well water in Kramat Pulo, Central Jakarta, on Friday. The Jakarta administration is asking residents to save water in conjunction with World Water Day. (JP/P.J. Leo)Despite concerns on land subsidence in the cpaital, the Jakarta Environmental Agency is finding it difficult to control groundwater use in commercial areas.

Agency environmental law enforcement chief Herry Permana Putra said on Friday that monitoring and controlling commercial buildings that illegally used groundwater had been difficult, as his department was understaffed and lacked funds.

“I only have four employees. One member takes care of administrative matters while the other four go to into the field to examine businesses that allegedly use groundwater illegally,” he said.

Herry said that his department had set a target to examine 200 sites a year across the city. “Although the number is small, I don’t want to set higher number, as our resources are limited.”

According to Bylaw No. 10/1998 on groundwater management and taxation, taking water from wedge or dug wells for commercial use can only be done with a permit from the governor’s office.

Wedge wells are typically less than 40 meters deep and are categorized as shallow groundwater, while dug wells are typically from 100 to 200 meters deep.

Owners must also pay water taxes varying from Rp 5,000 (51 US cents) to Rp 23,000 per cubic meter of water used depending on the size of their businesses.

Herry said that his department relied on information from city-owned water company PAM Jaya and the environmental agency’s groundwater and wastewater management department to find sites with illegal wells.

“Both institutions match their data, because a building usually uses either piped-in water or groundwater. Some buildings also have both,” he said.

PAM Jaya with its operators PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja) and PT Aetra Air Jakarta fulfill only 40 percent of local needs, with many relying on groundwater.

The head of the agency’s groundwater and wastewater management department, Bawa Sarasa, said that the agency managed 4,293 customers, comprising 2,488 groundwater users and 1,805 shallow groundwater users.

According to data from the Amrta Institute for Water Literacy, the city needs 426 million cubic meters of shallow groundwater a year to fulfill daily needs, while the agency said that groundwater use topped 7.2 million cubic meters in 2011.

PAM Jaya regulatory body member Firdaus Ali estimated that illegal groundwater use has increased by ten fold in recent years, Amrta reported in February.

Herry said that another problem faced by his officers in the field was difficulty in finding illegal wells in a building.

“Owners are sometimes really good in hiding the wells. We once found a well under a heavy machine in a laundry shop,” he said, adding that his department had identified 90 buildings with illegal wells out of 200 building surveyed last year.

Excessive groundwater use has been blamed as the cause of subsidence in the city.

The Jakarta Coastal Defence Strategy group reported in January that land subsidence in northern part of Jakarta reached up to 4.1 meters between 1974 to 2010.

Deputy Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama said that the administration was working with PAM Jaya to match buildings’ estimated water needs with actual use.

“This way we can measure how much groundwater that they use. We have increased the price of groundwater to force people to use water provided by PAM,” the deputy governor said.

The director of UNESCO’s local office, Hubert Gijzen, said on Friday during events to commemorate World Water Day that the water management issues could not be left to government institutions alone.

“These are issues that need to be managed together,” he said. (cor)