Jakarta plagued by water woes

Bruce Gale, Straits Times 27 Dec 08;

'JAKARTA may be an interesting and exciting place to visit,' notes one website dedicated to providing travel tips to foreigners. 'But please do not be too adventurous with your water and food.' Tap water, the website warns, is not fit for drinking.

Yet there are millions of people all over Indonesia who would be only too happy to drink tap water - if they could get it. According to the Public Works Ministry, piped water coverage reaches only 45 per cent of households in urban areas, and barely 10 per cent of rural areas. Most Indonesians get their drinking water from polluted wells and rivers.

Jakarta - home to more than eight million people - has one of South-east Asia's least developed piped water networks. As a result, large numbers of residents have been forced to join shopping complexes, hotels and skyscrapers in using increasingly contaminated groundwater. Unlike these latter consumers, however, most residents lack access to sophisticated water treatment equipment.

Clean water is becoming a scarce and increasingly expensive commodity in Indonesia.

A 2007 report by the Environment Ministry found that the water in rivers and lakes across the country had been severely contaminated by domestic and industrial waste. Jakarta, for example, is criss-crossed by 13 rivers, all of which are heavily polluted. Officials blame riverbank dwellers, while residents - familiar with the sight of dead fish floating in local rivers - accuse manufacturers of dumping hazardous waste.

Attempts to clean up the mess are complicated by political factors. Evicting thousands of illegal squatters along riverbanks to improve water catchment areas, for example, would almost certainly trigger protests from human rights activists. Jakarta's urban sprawl has also meant that the city has become heavily dependent upon limited supplies from neighbouring provinces for almost all of its piped water. The natural environment in upstream areas, such as in Bogor and Depok, is the responsibility of other administrations, which tend to see riverside areas as potential sources of income.

Yet Jakarta administration officials cannot avoid some of the blame. Areas once declared to be water catchments, such as Pasar Minggu and Bintaro in South Jakarta, have somehow lost this status over the years under successive Jakarta governors, with many being developed into residential or commercial areas.

Jakarta has a high annual rainfall, but the lack of water catchments has disrupted the natural groundwater cycle, with the remaining land unable to absorb water during the rainy season.

This development, together with the apparent inability of local officials to clear waterways of rubbish, has resulted in paralysing floods. Two-fifths of Jakarta is prone to flooding during the rainy season, which typically lasts several months.

Meanwhile, rising pollution levels have forced the city's two main water supply companies to step up their investments in treatment plants, resulting in a higher water tariff, which in turn encourages consumers to use more groundwater.

The hydrology department at the Ministry of Resettlement and Regional Infrastructure says that about 70 per cent of Jakarta's water needs are now met by groundwater. The over-exploitation of this resource has accelerated land subsidence, particularly in high-rise business districts. It has also lowered the water table, allowing salt water to intrude on a resource already contaminated by leaking septic tanks.

Most Indonesians respond to suspicions about the safety of local supplies by boiling their drinking water. However, at a national conference on sanitation in August, Health Ministry officials warned that this approach was not always effective. Tests had shown that boiled water could still contain harmful E. coli bacteria. Suggested alternatives included chlorination, solar disinfection and filtration. But after touting these techniques at the conference as being cheaper than buying bottled drinking water, officials have done little since to inform the public.

Attempts to expand the piped network are not merely limited by supply constraints. There are also other hurdles to overcome. The poor can't afford the fee for connection, which usually involves laying new pipes. Water theft, which is endemic in many areas, as well as the illegal status of many squatter dwellings, act as further disincentives to water companies.

One of Indonesia's development goals is to halve the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015. Microcredit financing schemes and community-based pipe networks have been introduced in poor areas to improve access to clean drinking water. And in an effort to conserve the water table, the Jakarta municipal administration has implemented regulations designed to encourage local industries to recycle the groundwater they use.

Much, however, remains to be done, including finding more efficient ways of collecting local rainwater.

Meanwhile, those depending on bottled mineral water need to exercise caution. The travel website suggests that visitors purchase their supplies from supermarkets and large retailers rather than street vendors. The latter, it warns, sell bottles that are often contaminated.

That's good advice for foreigners, but hardly practicable for the majority of Jakartans.