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Breached Levee Leads to More Floods in Muara Baru
Ulma Haryanto | June 28, 2010

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While the rest of the city has been celebrating Jakarta’s 483rd anniversary, residents of Muara Baru in Penjaringan subdistrict, North Jakarta, have been wallowing in fetid seawater for a week after tidal flooding breached a levee.

“We’ve been scrambling to shore up the dike but the water is still up to a meter deep in some places,” Mustihar, the coordinator of the Indonesian Red Cross’s volunteers in North Jakarta, told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday.

Parts of Muara Baru have been flooded since Tuesday from the tidal surge, but the wider flooding occurred at around 1 a.m. on Friday when the levee broke.

“The water started out 30 to 50 centimeters deep, and now we’re having to deal with waist-high flooding,” Mustihar said.

The dike, three-meters high and running for 50 meters along the water’s edge, was built by state-owned port operator PT Pelabuhan Indonesia II (Pelindo II). Around 20 meters of it have collapsed as a result of the waves, leading to initial flooding earlier in the week of up to four meters.

North Jakarta Mayor Bambang Sugiyono said Pelindo II had begun repairing the levee as recently as two weeks ago.

“But the repairs weren’t completed in time,” he said. “They were too late and the levee gave way last Friday. Pelindo II is currently reinforcing it to make it stronger and more permanent.

“In the meantime, we call on residents to use sandbags to shore it up temporarily. The Red Cross and local health agencies are distributing medicine, instant noodles, clean water and biscuits.”

The mayor also blamed the breach of the levee on “miscreants who keep taking it apart piece by piece for their own use.”

He added that the North Jakarta municipal administration planned to build a three-meter-high embankment running for 400 meters along the coast.

Tidal flooding in northern Jakarta is common, and residents of Muara Baru, Muara Karang, Penjaringan, Pademangan, Tanjung Priok, Pluit, Koja and Kapuk Muara are used to being regularly flooded all year round due to the tidal surges.

Urban planning experts say that land subsidence, combined with rising sea levels and the poor quality of the city’s drainage system, could combine to make the situation worse for those living along the waterfront.