Developers told to coordinate drainage systems

JAKARTA (JP): The secretariat head of the Greater Jakarta Coordination Board has suggested that developers coordinate the design and construction of drainage systems to prevent floods.

This would prevent floods not only in their project areas, but also in surrounding sites, secretariat head Gunawan said yesterday.

Developers, through provincial branches of the Indonesian Real Estate Developers Association, should have consulted local administrations before designing and building drainage systems, he said.

He acknowledged that Greater Jakarta does not yet have an integrated drainage plan.

"Currently each developer builds its own drainage system," Gunawan said.

It is likely this is one reason that areas between two real estate complexes become flooded, he said.

Residents in the Kelapa Dua complex in Tangerang recently said their homes were flooded for the first time since the residential area was built by the state-owned Perumnas housing company in 1989.

The area is located between two large-scale projects, Lippo Karawaci and Gading Serpong.

A plan for an integrated drainage system was drawn up in the 1980s, Gunawan said. However, a lack of funds may be the main factor hampering its realization, he added.

The coordination board, he added, can only urge the West Java and Jakarta administrations to adhere to spatial plans in issuing permits for developers.

He was commenting on results of a recent study coordinated by the Ciliwung-Cisadane river basin development project.

The study found that construction activities in areas around the river basin in West Java have greater potential to cause floods in Jakarta than building activities in upstream areas.

So far uncontrolled construction in the mountainous resort area of Bogor, Puncak and Cianjur have been blamed as the main cause of flooding in the capital. This led the National Development Planning Board to support firm action to preserve the area as a water catchment.

While action has been significant, Soeparmono, the director general of water resources development at the Ministry of Public Works, said recently only 20 percent of the runoff from upstream areas causes floods, compared to up to 50 percent of runoff from river basin areas. Projects here include those in Bukit Sentul, Pamulang, Ciputat and Cibubur.

Gunawan said he could not comment much on the fact that the developers obtained permits for the projects, as the coordination board has never been consulted. However, provincial administrations may also face difficulties as other offices also issue permits, he said.

A developer building a satellite town in Jonggol, for instance, gained permission from the Ministry of Forestry, without the acknowledgement of the board, he said.

Earlier, the Ciputra group announced it was building a 600- hectare town with camping grounds and a mini zoo in the vicinity of Jonggol, near the toll gate in Cibubur, East Jakarta.

Gunawan said that in the prevention of floods, the board coordinates the refunctioning of existing lakes, besides urging developers to build artificial lakes to replace the lost water catchment areas.

The board also coordinates the regreening of several "critical" areas with the Jakarta and West Java administrations, he said. (anr)