No quick solution to Padang floods

No quick solution to Padang floods

Syofiardi Bachyul Jb, The Jakarta Post/Padang

For Padang residents living in flood-prone areas, rain brings bad
luck. But a solution may still be a long way off.

For satay seller Syaiful, when the 1.5 meter high floodwaters
inundated his house in Lubuk Buaya subdistrict, Koto Tangah
district in the West Sumatra capital city Padang on the weekend,
he had to stop selling satay for two straight days.

"All of our foodstuff and other belongings were soaked in
water, so there's no way I could go out to work," he said.

He was not the only one who suffered. More than 2,000
residents living in flood-prone areas in Padang worry whenever
rain does not immediately stop because it means rivers and canals
would soon overflow, inundating houses and roads in the process.

Padang has been facing flood problems for a long time
because 21 rivers -- eight of which empty into the sea -- flow
through the 694.96 square kilometer city which is situated on the
west coast facing the Bukit Barisan mountain range.

Of the eight river estuaries, four which flow through the city
had their banks raised and reinforced in the 1980s. The rivers
had been widened and the banks reinforced with concrete dikes on
each side.

Of the four river estuaries, which have not been reinforced,
three of them are located in Koto Tangah district and the other
in Batang Kandis, often burst their banks during heavy rains,
causing the lowest area in Padang -- about one to three meters
above sea level -- to flood.

This year alone, Syaiful and hundreds of residents from Lubuk
Buaya, Pasir Kandang and Padang Sarai subdistricts have been hit
by floods twice -- with the first flood in August -- when the
swollen Batang Kandis burst its banks.

As a result, some of them had to flee their homes and return
after the floodwaters subsided.

Head of the Padang Housing and Regional Infrastructure Office.
Hervan Bahar, said the only way to handle floods in the three
subdistricts in Koto Tangah was through the Batang Kandis flood
management project which is expected to begin in 2006.

"The project will be implemented in stages since it needs a
lot of funds," Hervan said, adding the project might cost
hundreds of billions of rupiah.

Besides widening, dredging and reinforcing the riverbanks,
funds were also needed for land acquisition, he added, saying
that the funds would be obtained from the provincial and
municipal budgets, as well as from the state budget and foreign
loans.

He said that to curb flood problems in Padang, his office
would focus on three programs -- normalization of upstream areas
by reforestation, restoring the drainage system and maintaining
the drainage system through public participation.

Meanwhile, director of the Irrigation, Water Resource, Land
and Building Study Center of Andalas University, Helmi, said that
floods in Padang were mainly caused by inferior drainage, road
and house construction.

"Broken drains are usually repaired by just patching them up,
thus reducing their size. Roads here are usually patched
constantly by adding material until they become higher than the
level of houses. In developed countries, all the layers of the
road must be removed after the third layer before resurfacing the
road," he said.

The situation, he added, is exacerbated by the presence of the
construction of buildings and houses on former farmland, with the
new houses built above the road level and with yards fully
cemented, causing rainwater to run off and not be absorbed by the
soil. As a result the drains are unable to hold all the
rainwater.