Jakarta sinks as citizens tap groundwater

Reuters: [Jakarta] is one of the fastest-growing megacities in Asia. But some doomsters predict large parts of Indonesia's coastal capital could be under water by 2025. The reason? Unchecked groundwater mining.

"Groundwater extraction is unparalleled for a city of this size," Almud Weitz, regional team leader of the World Bank's water and sanitation programme, said in an interview for Reuters Environment Summit. "It's like Swiss cheese. People are digging deeper and deeper and so the city is slowly, slowly sinking. That is why tidal floods are occurring in poor areas on the coast."

Jakarta is one of Asia's more densely populated cities, but experts say it has one of the least developed piped water networks, pushing many residents as well as mushrooming megamalls and skyscrapers to increasingly suck out groundwater. According to some estimates, Jakarta has a water deficit of about 36 million cubic metres (1.28 billion cubic feet) a year and much of the groundwater is contaminated with faecal matter because of leaky septic tanks.

As the city of around 10 million sinks and sea levels rise because of climate change, Jakarta has become more vulnerable to flooding and the threat of severe tidal surges remains grave…..

Jakarta skyline, shot by Aberwa, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2