Puncak damage shown in water level
Theresia Sufa, The Jakarta Post, Bogor
The water level in the Katulampa dam in Bogor has become a reliable yardstick to measure the environmental destruction in Puncak hills, an expert has concluded after extensive research.
Director of the Spatial Planning and Development Center of the Bogor Agriculture Institute (IPB), Ernan Rustiadi, said on Friday that the wild extremes in the water level of the dam has shown that the water catchment areas in Puncak have been diminishing at an alarming rate because they have been converted into residential and/or commercial areas.
The unregulated development has also cut off water to many green areas and agricultural land, rendering them non-arable and infertile, and thus unable to soak up water and take pressure of the dam.
"If the government and the local administration continues to turn a blind eye to the environmental damage in Puncak, within five years, the Puncak area down to Jakarta and its surrounding will be completely destroyed like Bahorok," he warned, referring to the massive flash flood in North Sumatra last month that wiped a whole town off the map and left nearly 200 people dead. That flood was blamed on irresponsible logging and development upriver.
Ernan was speaking in the opening of an international seminar on Land Use and Land Cover Change and Environmental Problems from Dec. 19 to Dec. 21 at the Hotel Salak. Experts from Japan, China, India and Malaysia are among the 70 participants.
The water level in the rainy season in Katulampa dam has become overloaded, essentially because the lack of green areas. Ideally, the runoff from the reservoir in the wet season should be less than five times what it is in the dry season. At present the reservoir's water flow in the rainy season is 740,000 liters per second compared to 1,200 liters per second in the dry season.
The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency has recently warned that there would be rain for between 26 and 28 days in January with the rainfall of between 50 and 100 millimeters per day. It said a heavy rain averaging 75 mm per day for three straight days is enough to inundate the capital.
"Regulations alone are not enough to stop the conversion of green areas into industrial complexes, as we know that many presidential decrees on environmental protection in Puncak have been ignored by businesspeople.
"What we need is better control and cooperation between the government and the public," Ernan explained.
The seminar has four main themes: land cover change related to urbanization, the conversion of agricultural land contributing to food shortages, deforestation and water crises.