The period from the end of October until the beginning of December, 3 different Dutch Water Authorities teams visited the 3 regions on the island of Java, Indonesia, where the Blue Deal is active.
Pekalongan 23 until 27 October 2023
A team of 5 visited Pekalongan in the week of October 23 to 27. The activities consisted of providing training on the subject of wastewater treatment and operation and maintenance of wastewater treatment plants. An advisory report has been prepared for scenarios for improvement of two existing wastewater treatment plants for batik wastewater of the kota (city) and 2 in the kabupaten (regency) of Pekalongan. A visit from a specialist will follow at the beginning of December for a further exploration of Nature Based solutions (NbS) in the form of helophyte filters for the purification of batik wastewater.
The new DWA project leader has been involved in local water management issues. For a number of important sub-areas bordering the city, further exploration has been carried out into how to make these areas as a whole climate-robust and how the management of assets, such as flood defenses and pumping stations will play an important role in these. This will be further taken seriously in 2024.
Semarang 6 untill 10 november 2023
In 2023, the DWA team for the area of Semarang has undertaken two work visits. In both of the visits the team was generously welcomed at the offices of the municipality and Public Works of Semarang.
During the 1st work visit we had the opportunity to meet key stakeholders active in the Banger Polder area. We received insight in the workings of the control room that surprisingly showed an impressive overview of CCTV camera locations across the city of Semarang. Traffic jams in Semarang are often caused by flooding of the roads during the rainy season. They use the CCTV cameras also for monitoring of the occurrence of floods due to a lack of water level measuring points in the city.
In the second work visit four pumping station operational teams (UPTDs) presented their findings on how to improve the operation and maintenance (O&M) of pumping stations. We concluded with the aim to further work on (updated) Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s). This will be the focus of our next DWA work visit in March 2024!
Tangerang 27 November until 1 December
Staying calm under Climate pressure; this was the challenge during our recent visit to our partners in Kabupaten Tangerang in Java Indonesia. Our arrival late November coincided with the arrival of the rain season after an unusual long dry period. Where the dry period is currently not the focus of our Blue Deal partnership, it was clear that this had presented our counterparts with many challenges on water distribution. However the lack of water was soon replaced by an excess of water.
In a rapidly urbanizing and developing regency just West of Jakarta, with an area ¼ the size of The Netherlands and more than 2 million inhabitants, the water related challenges are abundant. For more focus and clear explanation of water issues, 2 defined pilot projects have been selected to start working on towards sustainable integrated water management. In one of those areas we support the partner in design and planning of a retention basin to prevent flooding in a low lying residential area. The recent and second visit to this area, a training on the basics of flood control and retention basins was performed; the pilot area was hit by the worst floods it had ever seen; caused by very heavy rainfall. The flood reached high water levels and flow velocities within 2 hours of rainfall and the water had mostly disappeared again within the next 3 hours indicating a lot of hardened surface upstream. Luckily nobody was hurt but the event put an immediate focus and motivation on our project.