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ur Hasanah, 42, vividly recalled the day in 2007 when Muara Baru Ujung, Penjaringan in North Jakarta was inundated with floodwater that was up to 4 meters deep.

“Water from the river and the sea mixed and flooded our houses in a matter of minutes,” she told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

That was when the old dilapidated seawall was destroyed by the flood that hit the capital, which caused Muara Baru to be inundated by floodwater for nearly two weeks.

Another resident, Maya, 28, said the water flooded her house, which is on the coastline, every morning during high tide.

“Residents would run to the second floor or leave their houses and wait for low tide to return because their houses would be flooded with seawater,” she recalled, adding that the old seawalls that bordered the residential area offered no protection.

The government and Jakarta administration recently rebuilt the seawall and built another one about 500 m from the old barrier. They are now working together to build a 20-kilometer seawall along Jakarta Bay to save it from being inundated with seawater and to mitigate the impact of land subsidence.

The Public Works and Housing Ministry’s director of rivers and shores, Jarot Widyoko, said the construction of the seawall was a necessary step to keep Jakartans safe, especially those who live near the coast, from being inundated with seawater.

“Jakarta is in dire need of the wall to prevent residents from being flooded every time it’s high tide,” he told the Post on Monday.

According to data on land subsidence in five cities in the world, which was compiled by Dutch research institute Deltares, Jakarta had sunk about 2 m between the 1950s and 2013, at an average of 7.5 centimeters to 10 cm a year. It could sink a further 6 m by 2100, meaning that seawater would be more likely to flood the city in the years to come.

Jarot said the government and city administration were cooperating to construct the seawall by dividing each work area.

Currently, the ministry is responsible for building a 4.5-km wall, divided into a 2.3-m seawall in Muara Baru, Penjaringan
and a 2.2-m wall Kalibaru, Cilincing, North Jakarta, which is located about 500 m from the coastline.

Jarot said the seawall’s construction would have been funded through a public-private partnership scheme between the government, Jakarta administration and several companies that built the reclaimed islets in Jakarta Bay.

However, since Governor Anies Baswedan revoked the permit of 13 out of 17 reclaimed islets in September, the construction would now be funded through the state budget, he added.

The Jakarta Water Resources Agency recently announced that the construction of the 1-km seawall in Marunda, Cilincing, North Jakarta, had reached 63 percent completion. It was part of an ambitious project dubbed National Capital Integrated Coastal Development (NCID).

Agency official Andika Purnomo said it had already installed 555 spun piles along the coastline.

“We aim to complete it by December. We will continue again in 2019 and we will build roads along the coastline from 2020 to 2022,” he said as reported by beritajakarta.id last week.

National Development Planning Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said the construction of the seawall would continue even though the reclamation project had been stopped.

“Jakarta really needs the seawall project, with or without reclamation,” he said, as quoted by Warta Kota last month, adding that the city administration should realize that the seawall could save Jakarta from being flooded by seawater due to the land subsidence it was facing.