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.