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Greater Jakarta’s 120-km coastal protection races against upcoming ‘king tide’
Coastal embankment project expands to other sinking cities: Tangerang and Bekasi.
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A resident sits to catch fish on a coastal embankment in Kalibaru, Cilincing in North Jakarta on Aug. 14. (JP/Rafaela Chandra Adi)
T
he government has found that the existing embankment on the northern coast of Jakarta, Tangerang and Bekasi is in critical condition and in urgent need of reinforcement. The project that involves 120 kilometers of embankment, however, has progressed slower than expected as the Public Works and Housing Ministry and the local administrations have built only 17 km since 2014.
The embankment project, known as the first phase of the National Capital Integrated Coastal Development (NCICD), is expected to cover all 120 km by 2024, consisting of 60 km of coastal embankment and 60 km of river embankment at the estuaries not just in Jakarta but also in Tangerang in Banten and Bekasi in West Java.
Experts have called the first phase a "no-regret measure" because it is an onshore project that has to be undertaken regardless of whether the offshore giant sea wall is built or not.
A king tide is coming
The 2016 Updated Master Plan of the NCICD laid out a plan to reinforce only 20.1 km of embankment in Jakarta. Experts agreed that the 20.1-km embankment was “critical” in flood-prone areas located below sea level or where the land subsidence rate was up to 7.5 centimeters per year, according to the 2019 Integrated Flood Safety Plan (IFSP) document available at www.ncicd.or.id. The rate of sinking is faster than the rising of the sea level due to climate change.
However, the document also states the urgency of completing an additional 100 km of embankment owing to unusually high "king tides", which occur on an 18.6-year cycle caused by the moon's elliptical orbit. The last time Greater Jakarta saw a king tide was in February 2007, when the metropolis was crippled by both flooding from the sea in the north, local heavy rains and overflowing river water from the south. The next king tide is predicted to occur in 2024-2025.
