Golf course owners told to build ponds
Golf course owners told to build ponds
JAKARTA (JP): The chairman of the Jakarta, Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi Development Cooperation Board, Andjat Lamey, wants Bogor golf course owners to develop water catchments to help solve the flood problem in Jakarta.
He emphasized that it is important to seek a variety of ways to replace natural water catchment systems.
Andjat said on Thursday that the plan to build a dam 30 kilometers south of the capital in Depok, which was suggested earlier by the Ministry of Public Works, would be too expensive.
"Land is too expensive, and people would protest at land appropriation efforts," Andjat told The Jakarta Post.
Many plots in Depok have become residential sites and natural lakes have disappeared.
Requiring golf course owners in Bogor to construct reservoirs on their grounds is one way of helping the government replace the lost natural water catchments, he said.
Andjat warned that floods are likely to continue to occur in the capital given the fact that when rain falls in the upstream areas of Bogor, up to 3,000 cubic meters per second of that water cannot be accommodated by the rivers and lakes in Jakarta.
"With normal rain levels in Bogor there would be a total of 7,035 cubic meters of water per second flowing into the rivers," he said.
The capital's 13 rivers can only accommodate 4,000 cubic meter per second, he added.
If golf course owners in Bogor build water catchments, this would help absorb part of the 3,000 cubic meters of water per second which cannot be accommodated in Jakarta, he said.
Support from golf course owners which own large plots, is "the perfect way to overcome floods in Jakarta. The government has already tried building water catchment wells and preserving the natural lakes in Bogor areas, but this is not enough," he said.
The recent floods, caused by rains both in Jakarta and Bogor, claimed at least 30 lives and caused material losses of billions of rupiah.
He added that other water catchments, besides conventional, large-scale reservoirs created by dams are needed.
Another relatively cheap way of preventing floods is widening the rivers, Andjat said.
Research by the University of Indonesia's Environmental Study Center shows the ministry's planned dam and reservoir in Depok, with a capacity of 25 million cubic meters of water, would still be too small to prevent floods in Jakarta. (yns)