Jakarta Plans to Construct Sea Wall Along North Coast

The Jakarta Globe, Ulma Haryanto

Raising the dead. Workers digging up graves at the Malaka Public Cemetery in East Jakarta on Tuesday. About 100 bodies had to be relocated in order to make way for the capital’s East Flood Canal project. (Photo: Yudhi Sukma Wijaya, JG)

Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo has announced that he would construct huge sea walls to protect the North Jakarta coastline from the possible consequences of global warming and other causes of tidal flooding.

“Flooding is not caused by trapped rainwater alone. It can also come from the sea, such as the tidal flooding in Muara Baru,” Fauzi said on Monday.

“Areas such as Muara Baru are the worst affected,” he added. “The sea wall will protect the lowlands of North Jakarta from the threats posed by tidal flooding.”

Fauzi also mentioned the possibility of using reverse osmosis to turn seawater into clean, drinkable water.

“B y using reverse osmosis, as already practiced by countries in the Middle East, seawater can be turned into drinking water. This is going to be a decades-long, not just a multi-year, project,” he said.

As previously reported by the Jakarta Globe, Armi Susandi, a climatologist from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), has predicted that Jakarta would sink at an average rate of 1.37 centimeters a year in the coming years.

Armi agreed that a sea wall should be built along the coastline of North Jakarta by 2015 to protect it from the rising waters.

“These walls should be at least 2 to 3 meters above sea level and 6 meters thick,” he said.

Rudi P Tambunan, head of urban development studies at the University of Indonesia, applauded Fauzi’s initiative. He said that last month he was invited to a meeting of the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) to discuss the prospect of protecting the coastline of North Jakarta from flooding.

“Considering the depth of the sea, those walls should be at places where the depth is 8 to 20 meters,” he said.

Rudi said the project was being explored in tandem with Fauzi’s initiative to reclaim certain areas of the coastline to create small islands and to revitalize existing beaches. He added that the city administration’s plan was to construct several two-square-kilometer islands 200 meters to 250 meters off the coastline.

Tarjuki, head of the water resources division at the Public Works Agency, confirmed to the Jakarta Globe that the sea wall had been included in the Jakarta Spatial Plan for 2010-2030.

However, he said, the project would not start immediately as the city administration would need to assess the details, which would take at least two years.

“The dikes currently built along the coast are temporary, and not for the long term,” he explained.

To mitigate flooding and offer residents protection from tidal surges, the Jakarta city administration has built dikes in some areas of North Jakarta, including Kali Baru, Pluit and Muara Baru. However, some sections of these dikes have reportedly already collapsed, with the worst failures in the Muara Baru area.