National drive required to conserve water

National drive required to conserve water

By Asep Fathulrachman

Unfortunately, it is not a case of water, water everywhere for
the world today. An estimated two billion people lack clean
drinking water and many countries suffer acute water shortages.
The articles on this page are published in conjunction with World
Water Day, which fell on March 22.

JAKARTA (Antara): Some people, particularly those in the
tropics, usually use water freely because they think of it as a
natural resource which will always be available.

But the reality is different.

According to the Ministry of Public Work's Director General of
Waterworks Soeparmono, Madura island in Java has an acute water
shortage, as do a number of large cities on other islands.

He said that a survey conducted by his office in 1993 revealed
that only 99.4 cubic kilometers of a potential 1,847 cubic
kilometers of water, or 4.4 percent, had been utilized across the
country.

Yet, the water-supply level in regions usually hit by water
scarcity is alarmingly critical during the dry season.

"Large cities like Medan and Denpasar and most regions on
Java, including Madura, have a water crisis during the dry season
because there is a sharp drop in both the volume and quality of
the water supply," he said.

"So, even in Indonesia, particularly in densely populated
regions, water is no longer an unlimited natural resource. It is
becoming a rare commodity with a high economic value," he said at
the establishment of the Forum for the Development of National
Water Resources in Yogyakarta early this year.

According to Soeparmono, the introduction of bottled mineral
water several years ago marked the shift of the value of water
from a generally valueless natural resource to one with a high
economic value.

"This shift in the value of water is understandable because
water of good quality, previously almost limitless, is now
getting harder and harder to get. Even the water supplied by the
city drinking water company is of an unsatisfactory quality," he
said.

The economic value of water is naturally increasing because it
is getting more and more difficult even to get good quality bath
water, he added.

The head of the Center for Studies on Rural and Regional
Development of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Loekman
Soetrisno, shared the same opinion as Soeparmono and said that
unless serious attention was immediately paid to the problem, the
water crisis in Indonesia would worsen.

Soetrisno, a sociologist, attributed the water crisis to the
strong demands of population growth and a high development rate.

"In view of the uneven population spread, the assumption that
Indonesia, famous as a fertile land, will never suffer a water
crisis, hardly holds water any longer," he said.

The number of people consuming water on Java and in large
cities on other islands far exceeds the normal capacity of the
country's water resources, he said, adding that once the source
was altered, a water crisis became more and more serious.

Another factor disrupting the balance of water resources is
the conversion of agricultural land with technical irrigation
into industrial estates, he said.

Things worsen, he added, because industrial estates on Java
are usually concentrated in a particularly wide area with little
consideration given to the natural balance of water sources.

To prevent the water crisis from worsening, Soetrisno said
that a national drive should be launched to promote prudent and
economical water usage.

This drive, he said, should be introduced as early as possible
otherwise problems related to water shortages would become more
and more difficult as there would be stronger demand due to
population growth and urbanization.

"So, the water conservation that President Soeharto officially
announced when the country embarked on its second long-term
development period (1994/2019) must be immediately implemented,"
he said.

Meanwhile Soeparmono said the government had, in fact,
formulated the drive in four stages, namely to promote
understanding of the need to conserve water, improved attitudes,
encouragement of participation of communities in water
conservation and consolidation.

In general, he said, water conservation required greater
participation from women because they were the first to feel the
pinch of a water crisis in their households.

"It is expected that the whole thing will be implemented in
April 1998 after the forum completes the drawing up of the
formulation for the drive," he said.

Water conservation will be institutionalized this year, just
like the poverty-eradication drive in least-developed villages,
he added.