Indonesia Weather Agency Urges Water Management Ahead of Early Dry Season

SP/Marsel Rombe Saan Jakarta Globe 4 Mar 13;

Indonesians should prepare for an early onset of the dry season and start conserving water, a Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) official said on Monday.

Head of BMKG Mulyono Prabowo said that the dry season would not arrive at the same time in every area in the country, but it would come more quickly this year than in previous years.

“With this type of rainfall, Java will soon enter the dry season,” he said on Monday.

Prabowo said Indonesia should implement water management, especially for the agriculture sector. He urged farmers to anticipate a limited water supply and city dwellers to start preserving the limited resource.

Previously the agency predicted the dry season would arrive in Indonesia in April, however some areas started to experience the dry season as early as February. The dry season is expected to hit many more locales this month.

National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said even though the dry season would come early this year, it did not pose serious danger.

“To welcome the early dry season, BNPB has arranged a contingency plan to anticipate forest fires. We have updated all the high risk areas and coordinated the plan with the other institutions,” he said, adding than BNPB has allocated Rp 250 billion ($25.8 million) for potential disasters.

Last year, nine of the 10 districts and cities across West Nusa Tenggara suffered an inordinately harsh dry season that extended from March through November and forced residents in some areas to travel several kilometers a day just to fetch water.

Also in 2012, the unusually intense dry season affected the production of rice in Klaten, a key rice-producing district in Central Java.

Djoko Sarjono, head of the Klaten chapter of the Indonesian Farmers Association (HKTI), said last October that besides not being able to reach the surplus rice production target of 125 million tons, the existing production was lacking in quality due to low water supplies.

The drought reduced the volume of water in rivers, lakes, wells and reservoirs in 2012. The water shortages dried irrigation channels that are used to hydrate more than 127,000 hectares of paddy fields, turning the farmland into parched tracts and causing thousands of farmers to suffer financial losses.

Forest fires also raged across Kalimantan, Java and other areas of Indonesia in 2012.