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.