Regency complains of illegal wells

Regency complains of illegal wells

Theresia Sufa, The Jakarta Post, Bogor

A total of 447 industrial artesian wells in the industrial
estates of Citeureup, Gunung Putri and Cileungsi in Bogor regency
do not have permits from the regency mining authority.

"The regency administration is powerless to take stern action
against those companies that have illegal artesian wells. It's
our weakness," agency groundwater exploration head Dede Armansyah
told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

"The regency-run water company PDAM should be the one that
drilled the wells but it couldn't do it due to its limited
capacity. That's why many companies drilled the wells
themselves."

Companies should obtain permits to bore wells and pay annual
tax on underground water.

Dede said the remaining 887 wells in the regency had permits
but only eight had a monitoring well to monitor underground water
levels.

Regency bylaws state that each company with more than five
industrial wells must have a monitoring well.

Dede said that so far only one of the eight companies that had
industrial wells, PT Indocement Tunggal Prakasa Tbk., had
regularly reported its water levels to the agency.

Companies must drill more than 40 meters to get underground
water and put concrete on the wells' walls so as not to absorb
underground water from surrounding household wells.

The densely populated industrial area ideally should have 40
monitoring wells.

"Otherwise, Bogor will suffer from decreasing underground
water levels like in Bandung, Jakarta and Semarang," Dede said.

In Bandung regency, the underground water level was five
meters in the 1970s but 20 years later it was 100 meters due to
uncontrolled boring of artesian wells in Leuwi Gajah industrial
estate.

Dede said that the underground water level in the regency was
still good at an average of 10 meters. In the mountain resort of
Puncak the level was only five meters.

"The problem is we don't know for how long we can maintain
such a good condition. If we have adequate monitoring wells, we
can monitor the underground water level in this area," he said.