Water wheels alleviate effects of drought

Suherdjoko, The Jakarta Post, Semarang

The scorching afternoon sun failed to put out the working spirit of Sumar, 70.

He was busy working in his yellowish rice field. He yelled at the birds who tried to eat the paddy and pulled a rope connected to a scarecrow to scare them away.

"Those birds are naughty. If I don't stand guard here, they will eat all my paddy," said the resident of Talun Kacang hamlet of Kandri village, Gunungpati regency, Semarang, Central Java.

How could the paddy grow so well during the long dry season like this?

"Oh, that is because of the water wheel I made last July. This year I can expect to harvest during the dry season. In the past, all my land was dry from drought and I couldn't plant anything," he told The Jakarta Post recently.

He said the land in the valley of the Kreo river was actually fertile. In the rainy season, the area turns into paddy fields, but the dry season brings trouble to farmers whose lands are located to the east of the river.

They could not grow anything because the land became so barren and cracked due to the lack of water. Sumar said the villagers had tried many things but to no avail.

"There is water in the river located three meters below our rice fields that flows all year long. We could pump up the water using a diesel machine. We did try this method. But the cost was too high compared to the harvest," he said.

The idea to use a water wheel to irrigate the fields came from Majuri, Sumar's younger brother, who was inspired by a television program about two years ago.

Majuri designed the water wheel as he had seen on TV. The five-meter diameter wheel was installed at the side of the Kreo river. It is equipped with a total of 52 propellers made of used corrugated iron sheets and a number of bamboo containers.

The flow of the water was concentrated under the wheel and as it started to rotate, it brought up together the bamboo containers which were filled with water.

When the bamboo containers reached the top of the wheel, it would pour the water into a container that channeled the water into the rice fields by pipes with a diameter of eight centimeters.

"At that time (last year), only Majuri could harvest rice," Sumar said.

Majuri's success with the simple water wheel technology motivated several other farmers to make similar wheels to wet their rice fields during this year's dry season.

Now there are six water wheel installed at the side of Kreo river, which rotate day and night to irrigate about 10 hectares of the villagers' fields.

They seriously made the water wheel using simple but better materials. The wheels were made of wooden bars instead of tree branches and they used new corrugated iron sheets for the propellers. For the axis of the wheel, they even used a part of the car wheel.

"I spent Rp 1.5 million for this water wheel. I think the others also spent about the same amount of money," said Ponari, one of the villagers who owned a water wheel.

Each wheel operates at different speeds, depending on the location. Those located at the sloping area move faster, meaning that more water is channeled to the fields.

Even though the water does not reach all of fields in the area, the villagers are quite happy because the technology enables them to harvest their corps in the near future. There are paddy, cucumbers and long beans that are ready for the harvest.

"For the cucumbers, we must be careful with the water distribution. Parts of my cucumbers were bad because of too much water. Their stems were rotten because I forgot to stop the water distribution," Sumar said.

It is very easy to stop the water wheel. Just insert a wooden stick among the spokes of the wheel and it would lock it.

The water wheels along the Kreo river also attract local people.

"Our water wheel become an attraction for the people. It happens that they are located in the vicinity of the Kreo Cave tourism area," Sumar said proudly.

The tourism area is situated 10 kilometers southwest of Semarang city. From the parking lot of the cave, one can reach the water wheels by walking down the river bank via a 700-meter long path.

But don't expect to see any water wheel during the rainy season because they would be moved away from the river side.

"We don't want to experience what Pak Majuri did. His water wheel was washed away in the flood," he said.