Water crisis looms in Jakarta

Water crisis looms in Jakarta

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Drinking a glass of water may soon become a luxury for Jakarta
residents as the supply of raw water to the city has been
continuously diminishing over the past few years.

Kumala Siregar, director of institutional relations for water
utility PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya, has warned that the city may see a
serious shortage of drinking water as early as 2008.

"Currently, we have to cope with fluctuating levels of raw
water supply due to continuously shrinking water volumes in the
Jatiluhur reservoir, which has been our main supplier for
decades," Kumala said during a visit to The Jakarta Post on
Friday.

"No solution is in sight to the threat of looming shortages,"
said Kumala, who visited the Post along with executives of
PT Thames PAM Jaya, PAM Jaya and the Water Regulatory Board (BR).

The Jatiluhur reservoir in Purwakarta, West Java, supplies 80
percent of the raw water for over 700,000 water consumers across
the city. The remaining 20 percent of the raw water comes from
the local government water utility PDAM Tangerang in Banten
province, the Krukut River and local government water utility
PDAM Bogor in West Java province.

Owing to shrinking water volumes in the Citarum Barat river, a
situation exacerbated by increasing pollution, the quality and
quantity of raw water from the Jatiluhur reservoir has been
falling every year.

A recent report said that the water level in the 4,500-square-
kilometer reservoir was now only 92 meters, well below the normal
level of 98.84 meters.

Voicing similar concerns, Rhamses Simanjuntak, director of
communications and external relations for Thames PAM Jaya (TPJ),
said that the quality of raw water was getting worse, especially
during the dry season, forcing water utilities to put the water
through additional processing.

TPJ, which is a subsidiary of Britain's Thames Water
International, supplies customers in the east of Jakarta, while
Palyja, a subsidiary of France's Suez (formerly Lyonaisse des
Eaux), serves customers in the western part of the city. Both
companies signed 25-year collaboration agreements with the city
in 1998.

PAM Jaya finance director Kris Tutuko said that the management
of the Jatiluhur reservoir had promised to provide additional
water supplies of up to 5,000 liters per second to Jakarta up
until 2010.

"However, we have yet to see any concrete measures taken to
increase the reservoir's water volume," Kris told the Post.

The Jakarta administration and the Ministry of Public Works
are jointly constructing a reservoir in Ciawi, near Bogor in West
Java, that will draw water from the Ciliwung River.

"But, the reservoir is part of a flood mitigation scheme. We
don't know for sure how much water it can supply to Jakarta," he
said.