447 drilling wells have no permits

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.