http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/broken-dyke-stops-water-supply-in-jakarta/462899
Broken Dike Stops Water Supply in Jakarta Dofa Fasila | September 01, 2011 Wednesday night’s break in the dyke on the Kalimalang River in East Jakarta has cut off the water supply to hundreds of thousands of residents in the capital. Repairs crews are working to fix the damage, but it is estimated it will take up to three days before it is complete and water supplies return to normal. (JG Photo/Yudhi Sukma Wijaya Hundreds of thousands of Jakartans have been left without access to clean water after parts of a dyke in East Jakarta collapsed in front of a water intake pipe, officials said on Thursday. Repairs on the 10-meter breach on the Kalimalang River will take up to three days and water supplies will not resume as normal until then, they said. The company in charge of the raw water supply, Perum Jasa Tirta II, has confirmed that a breach occurred at about 8 p.m. on Wednesday, disrupting supply to the city’s two water operators, PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja) and Aetra Air Jakarta. About 60 percent of Palyja’s 420,000 customers in Central, West and North Jakarta have had their clean water supply disrupted due to the breach, the company’s corporate communication manager, Meyritha Maryanie, said on Thursday. The three firms were working to fix the breach, she added. The breach occurred after the wall could no longer contain the water pressure, because of several small fractures that weakened the structure. Palyja was the water provider most affected by the incident, while Aetra expects that its water supply could return to normal as soon as today. “The water supply will go back to normal once the breach is repaired,” Meyritha said, estimating that the process could take at least three days. In the meantime, Palyja is seeking to get supplies from Aetra using an interconnecting pipe network, but the two companies are still awaiting a permit from PAM Jaya, the city’s water company. “It is true that we will have to flush the interconnection pipes because they have not been used in a while, but this should not take much time,” Meyritha said.She said once the permit was issued, clean water supplies would resume “in just a few hours.” Rika Anjulika, corporate communications manager for Aetra, said the breach was causing the Pulogadung water treatment facility, also in East Jakarta, to produce clean water at only half of its normal capacity, while the Kalimalang facility was producing at 80 percent of capacity. The breach also disrupted supplies of clean water to the presidential palace, City Hall and the legislative building complex, all customers of Palyja. Meyritha said the company was sending two water tank trucks, each of 5,000 liters, to supply clean water for the three buildings. Aetra was deploying 11 water tank trucks to meet the water demands of hospitals in the affected areas. Presidential spokesman Julian Aldrin Pasha said that the breach of the dyke did not disrupt activities at the palace. “The head of the palace secretariat did not report anything abnormal. Everything is operating as normal and there have been no complaints related to a clean water shortage,” he said. City Hall spokesman Cucu Ahmad Kurnia, said operations at the Jakarta provincial administration’s headquarters were not affected yet, as most staff were still on the Idul Fitri holiday. “Hopefully, when everyone is back at work on Monday, the clean water supply will have resumed again,” Cucu said. Figures from Water Environment Partnership in Asia show that about 80 percent of Indonesians lack access to clean piped water, particularly in rural and remote locations, forcing reliance on untreated water from rivers. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
