Experts blames unchecked development for floods

Experts blames unchecked development for floods

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

An imbalanced policy between physical development and
environmental conservation has contributed to the flooding in the
capital in the last 10 years, environmentalist Ahmad Syarifuddin
says.

"The intensifying conversion of open spaces into buildings has
made the remaining green areas unable to support the physical
development," he told The Jakarta Post recently.

President Megawati Soekarnoputri has blasted some city's
administration policies in altering the land use master plan to
allow private sector construction projects.

With the rainy season coming, people are worrying about
possible floods that might be as bad as last years, where water
inundated 168 of 262 subdistricts across the city. At least 31
people were killed while 300,000 others had to be evacuated in
the calamity.

Ahmad, also former chairman of the Environment Forum (Walhi)
in the city, expressed concern that the city administration had
done little to prevent floods but only taken measures to overcome
the impact.

"They have learned absolutely nothing from annual floods,
particularly last year's," he said, adding that the
administration was only busy preparing rubber dinghies, setting
up rescue teams or monitoring the Manggarai and Depok sluice
gates.

The main problem, he said, was caused by the reduced number of
green areas. In 1965, Jakarta had around 24,000 hectares of green
areas, or around 40 percent of its 60,000-hectares. The figure
decreased to 18,000 hectares in 1985 and to 6,000 hectares in
1998. Now Jakarta only has 4,320 hectares of green areas.

Bylaw No.5/1984 on Jakarta's spatial zoning states that the
city must have between 26.5 percent and 31.5 percent, or between
15,900 hectares and 18,900 hectares of green areas.

"But we have only seen successful lobbying by businessmen to
the city governor to covert more and more of the open spaces into
business centers in Kapuk, Pluit, Pulomas, Kuningan, Kelapa
Gading and South Jakarta," Ahmad said.

With 13 rivers flowing through the capital, more areas have
become prone to flooding since the conversion of the function of
the 1,114-hectare mangrove forest in Kapuk, North Jakarta, for
luxury housing, commercial areas and the Sedyatmo toll road in
the 1990s.

The decreasing number of water catchment areas in the
mountains to the south of Jakarta namely Bogor, Puncak and
Cianjur -- due to the mushrooming estate development -- have also
been partly blamed for causing floods in the capital.

"An average of 60 big trees are slashed down illegally in the
Mt. Salak forest everyday," Ahmad said, referring to the mountain
in Bogor regency.

A weather forecast says that high-intensity rain between
January and March next year will likely hit the city and could
cause landslides like last year.

"Besides an El Nino phenomenon, the wind will also blow
strongly, bringing at least two cyclones from Australia to the
southern part of Java. This will certainly worsen the situation
in Jakarta," said an independent meteorologist Hendro Purnomo.

Ahmad said the only way to make Jakarta free from floods was
by "building a better drainage and flood-control system, dredging
rivers frequently and coordinating with the Bogor regency
administration to build more canals and lakes in the highland
areas."