Great Garuda in Jakarta

Dutch Newspaper Trouw reported on the Great Garuda Masterplan that the engineering company Witteveen+Bos is proposing in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Jakarta is facing an average land subsidence of 7.5 cm annually, but some areas experience 25 cm, which means that flooding is a real threat.The main cause of subsidence is ground water withdrawal, which only increases with increasing urbanization.  The rivers meanwhile often become clogged by garbage, and drainage systems are behind in maintenance.The current poor state of levees adds to these problems. Even without climate change and rising sea levels, the city is facing the consequences of unsustainable water management.

The Great Garuda Masterplan is to create a large reservoir between the city and the ocean, which can store water during the rainy season. It has to be located off land as there is no space left on land to build a reservoir. In combination with this, the goal is to both heighten the levees (both for the rivers and the ocean) and clean the rivers, so that in the future the stored water flowing from the rivers to the reservoir may be used as drinking water.

The engineering firm combined the idea of building a reservoir with the opportunity for constructing houses or industrial areas along the edges, to partially gain back the construction costs. They also propose measures to reduce the burden of this construction project on people living in poverty, such as sluices for fishermen to pass through the reservoir.

It will still take 2-3 years before the various levels of the Indonesian government make their final decision on which of the many proposed plans to execute, so we will have to wait and see if Jakarta gets this Garuda reservoir.