447 drilling wells have no permits

Theresia Sufa The Jakarta Post Bogor

A total of 447 drilling wells in the industrial estates of Citeureup, Gunung Putri and Cileungsi in Bogor regency do not have permits from the regency mining authority.

"The regency administration is powerless to take stern action against those companies that have illegal drilling wells. It's our weakness," agency underwater exploration head Dede Armansyah told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

"The regency-run water company PDAM should be the one that drilled the wells but it couldn't do it due to its limited capacity. That's why many companies drilled the wells themselves."

Companies should obtain permits to drill wells and pay annual tax on underground water.

Dede said the remaining 887 wells in the regency had permits but only eight had a monitoring well to monitor underground water levels.

Regency bylaws state that each company with more than five drilled wells must have a monitoring well.

Dede said that so far only one of the eight companies that had drilling wells, PT Indocement Tunggal Prakasa Tbk., had regularly reported its water levels to the agency.

Companies must drill more than 40 meters to get underground water and put concrete on the wells' walls so as not to absorb underground water from surrounding household artesian wells.

The densely populated industrial area ideally should have 40 monitoring wells.

"Otherwise, Bogor will suffer from decreasing underground water levels like in Bandung, Jakarta and Semarang," Dede said.

In Bandung regency, the underground water level was five meters in the 1970s but 20 years later it was 100 meters due to uncontrolled drilling in Leuwi Gajah industrial estate.

Dede said that the underground water level in the regency was still good at an average of 10 meters. In the mountain resort of Puncak the level was only five meters.

"The problem is we don't know for how long we can maintain such a good condition. If we have adequate monitoring wells, we can monitor the underground water level in this area," he said.