0 Ciliwung Spillway, Restoration Projects To Start Soon: Government

The central government is preparing to immediately resume a program to dredge and widen a key river passing through Jakarta as soon as flood recovery efforts have concluded. Public Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto said on Tuesday that the so-called river normalization program had already been carried out for some of the waterways in the capital, but not yet for the Ciliwung, Jakarta’s main river and the cause of much of the inundation from last week’s widespread flooding. 

“The program has already been done along the Angke, Pesanggrahan and Sunter rivers, but it isn’t over yet because we still need to normalize the Ciliwung,” he said. He added that restoring the high flow rate of the river would require relocating thousands of residents living in illegal dwellings along the banks of the Ciliwung, which made the project particularly difficult. Djoko said that while efforts were being carried out to persuade residents to move and to acquire land on either side of the river to widen it, the government would also work on a program to divert some of the water from the Ciliwung to the East Flood Canal. 

Most of the water from the Ciliwung is currently channeled into the West Flood Canal, built during the Dutch colonial era, while the rest is allowed to flow naturally north through the city. The unusually high volume of water in the river last week forced officials to open the Manggarai floodgate, at the head of the flood canal, causing the levee to break and resulting in severe flooding in downtown Jakarta last Thursday and Friday. The spillway to the East Flood Canal, which is expected to be completed this year, is designed to prevent similar incidents. 

Djoko said that work would also begin on building a reservoir in the upstream area of Ciawi in Bogor, to prevent large amounts of water heading downstream and flooding the capital. However, he said the project would take several years to complete, with the tender for the contracts only expected to be held next year. Work on the spillway, however, will start soon, Djoko said, and will be funded by the central government. “The funding will definitely come from the government, although we haven’t designated an allocation yet in the ministry’s budget implementation filing,” he said. He added his ministry was in talks with the Finance Ministry to discuss the funding mechanism for the project, whose cost has not yet been determined.

source : the jakarta globe