Jakarta residents warned to use water wisely

JAKARTA (JP): Noting that increases in water rates were unavoidable to improve water supplies, an executive of a foreign water operator warned on Tuesday of the danger of subsidence from irresponsible groundwater exploitation.

PT Thames Pam Jaya's executive finance manager Rhamses Simanjuntak told a media briefing that many city resident were overexploiting the groundwater supply by establishing their own wells.

Most modern hotels, high-rise office buildings, factories and hundreds of thousands of households in Greater Jakarta have drilled wells to meet their water demands. Many of the wells violate the city's regulation regarding deep well drilling.

Rhamses said overexploitation of water sources could cause environmental degradation such as ground subsidence that eventually would lead to seawater intrusion which, in 1994, reached as far as the National Monument in Central Jakarta.

Company data based on independent studies found ground subsidence in the city ranges from 40 millimeters to 80 millimeters annually.

"In North Jakarta alone, the ground subsidence has reached nearly one meter due to overuse of groundwater." He said the subsidence left areas vulnerable to flooding.

The company plans to hold talks with the city's mining agency, which is responsible for monitoring deep well drilling, to find ways to reduce illegal groundwater exploitation.

He added that the city authorities would also have to deal with growing concern about the pollution of aquifers, which would challenge city dwellers to switch from deep wells to a piped supply.

The company's president, Pierre Jacobs, said that to improve the quality of the drinking water supply to East Jakarta, the firm would have to raise rates. He noted there was no rate increase in the past two years although the country's inflation rate topped 80 percent.

Jacobs said a committee, comprising city officials and councilors, would be set up soon to decide on rate increases.

Thames Pam Jaya has invested US$70 million thus far to overhaul water facilities in East Jakarta. It is part of its $200 million investment scheme over a five-year period, ending in 2003, to supply clean water to over one million people.

The company, which began operations in February 1998, said it managed to reduce the leakage rate to 47 percent from 57 percent, which is equivalent to the water supply for 60,000 households.

It also offered jobs to 1,300 employees of state-run water company PAM Jaya.

Thames Pam Jaya is one of two private water companies with an agreement with PAM Jaya to buy water in bulk from the Jatiluhur Water Authority to process and sell it to consumers.(06/05)