Flood fighters face difficult challenges

Flood fighters face difficult challenges

JAKARTA (JP): The municipal agencies responsible for flood
prevention face three tremendous problems which must be solved or
ever larger portions of the capital will continue to vanish under
water every rainy season.

The first problem is domestic and industrial waste.

Many of the city's residents are still having problems
properly disposing of household waste, Antara news agency
reported.

All 13 rivers in Jakarta are clogged with garbage. The
condition of the Cisadane, Ciliwung and Sunter rivers illustrate
the problem graphically.

The Municipal Public Work's Office can manage to remove only
250 cubic meters of garbage from the city's rivers during each
clean-up sweep. This leaves around 650 cubic meters of trash to
float out to sea, while another 450 cubic meters sinks to the
bottom of the rivers.

Chief of the City Public Works Office Soeharto said that the
office spends around Rp 3 billion a year for cleaning trash out
of the rivers. The office also allocates an additional Rp 1.2
billion for the repair of major water ducts.

Soeharto was quoted by Antara as saying that the cost could be
reduced if the people, especially those living along river
banks, dumped their garbage in the proper places.

The second problem encompasses the decreasing number of water
catchment sites as land is claimed for construction and other
purposes, and the illegal construction of buildings along river
banks. Many of the illegal structures are put up by squatters.

Soeharto said that the existence of the illegal structures
along river banks has narrowed the river channels from 15 meters
to only six meters in places.

Soeharto said the office has cleared away illegal buildings
from along the banks of the Ciliwung River and relocated the
squatters to low-cost apartments.

An executive from the Ciliwung and Cisadane Rivers Maintenance
Department, Suwardi S. said that the rapid growth encroachment of
shopping centers, as well as housing estates, onto natural water
catchment areas has caused rain to fail to be absorbed optimally
into the soil.

"Cemented and asphalted spaces cannot absorb the rain, so
larger amounts of water flow into the drainage ditches and the
rivers," he said.

Parks

To face this challenge the city park office is now trying to
develop as many public parks as possible. The chief of the parks
office, Syamsir Alam, said that the municipal administration is
planning to reclaim 250 public parks that have been converted to
other purposes from 1994 to 1997.

The chief of the Municipal Cemetery Office is also taking part
in the efforts to cope with the challenge by issuing a new
regulation, which stipulates a standard design for graves in
Jakarta. The ordinance forbids the use of bricks or concrete in
the construction of tombs.

The third problem, which has made wider segments of the
capital prone to seasonal flooding, is the illegal use of deep
ground water wells.

The chief of the Jakarta office of the Ministry of Public
Works, Dargono Danoeprawiro, said that over the last 12 years the
land surface in several places in the city has sunk up to 50
centimeters.

He said this will reach a level of four to five meters below
the existing surface in another 50 years, if people continue
drilling the deep wells.

The municipal administration has ruled that owners of high-
rise buildings must have permits before driving wells.

Dargono said the government is now trying to fulfill the
people's demands for water from other sources.

This challenge is probably the most difficult to face because
H. Poedjiono, PAM Jaya's business director, has said that the
city-owned water company can supply only 58.8 percent of the
city's total daily water demand of 1.7 million cubic meters.
(mas)