Eastern Flood Canal to be built next year

Eastern Flood Canal to be built next year

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

To address the problem of flooding in the capital, the government
will begin construction of the Eastern Flood Canal in 2004, a
government official said on Monday.

Minister of Resettlement and Regional Infrastructure Soenarno
said on Monday the government only needed to conduct further
studies before beginning with the construction.

"We will finish the final design for the canal this year,
while the physical construction, starting with the land
appropriation, will begin in early 2004," Soenarno said after
attending a limited Cabinet meeting at the State Palace to
discuss spatial planning for Java island.

The schedule outlined by the minister is much slower than one
laid out by the head of the City Public Works Agency, IGKG Suena.
Speaking last Friday, he said the project had begun last year
with the appropriation of land along the proposed route for the
canal, while construction would begin this year without waiting
for the completion of the land appropriation process.

Soenarno said construction of the canal would be followed by
the development of a water reservoir in the upper course of the
Ciliwung River, and the construction of two small dams to hold
back the water before it is released into the canal.

The two dams, Soenarno said, would be able to hold some 18,000
cubic meters of water each.

The minister said the government could not begin construction
of the canal immediately because it needed to review the
situation in the settlement areas in the areas around the planned
canal.

Jakarta suffered the worst flooding in its history last year,
with almost every part of the city affected for about three
weeks.

Water inundated the city's main thoroughfares of Jl. Thamrin
and Jl. Sudirman, along with many other business areas, crippling
the capital's economic wheels for weeks.

Governor Sutiyoso has been under fire because of the disaster,
leaving him with few other choices but to go forward with the
construction of the canal, which was designed in 1976 to
complement the Western Flood Canal.

Financial issues have always been the main reason for the
delay in the construction of the Eastern Flood Canal, but
Soenarno said 90 percent of the money for the project would come
from the central government.

Suena said last Friday that the development of the 100-meter-
wide canal, which will run through eastern Jakarta, was earlier
estimated to cost Rp 7 trillion.