Jakarta’s governor says the capital’s proposal to desalinate seawater as a hedge against worsening drought is technically feasible, but only once construction begins on the long-planned Giant Sea Wall — tying the city’s newest water-security idea to one of its largest, and most delayed, infrastructure megaprojects.
“To convert seawater into usable fresh water, one of the prerequisites is that the Giant Sea Wall project must get underway,” Governor Pramono Anung said Thursday. Once construction starts, he explained, the sea wall would provide a sufficient supply of brackish water that could then be processed into fresh water for daily use. The city’s water utility, PAM Jaya, has said it is ready to carry out desalination once that supply materialises.
A drought warning triggers the proposal
The idea originated with Jakarta’s Regional House of Representatives (DPRD), whose speaker, Suhud Alynudin, pointed to the Thousand Islands, where small-scale desalination already converts seawater into drinking water, as a model the capital should expand. “I believe we should start doing this elsewhere to anticipate a clean water shortage in Jakarta,” Alynudin said, warning that drought conditions could persist for an extended period and affect residents citywide.
The proposal comes as Jakarta’s disaster management agency has issued an early warning for meteorological drought, with the national meteorological agency placing West, Central, East and North Jakarta, along with the Thousand Islands, under its most severe “Warning” category for the second ten-day period of September.
Why the sea wall is the bottleneck
The Giant Sea Wall is a vast, long-discussed coastal barrier project intended primarily to protect low-lying, rapidly subsiding North Jakarta from flooding and sea-level rise. Tying seawater desalination to its construction reflects a practical calculation: the wall’s presence would create the calmer, more consistent brackish-water conditions officials say are needed to make desalination viable for the city, rather than the capital pursuing a standalone seawater intake facility.
That dependency means Jakarta’s desalination timeline is now effectively bound to the sea wall’s own progress, a project that has faced years of delays, funding disputes and design revisions since it was first proposed. For a fast-subsiding megacity of nearly 30 million people already grappling with groundwater overextraction, the announcement signals growing official appetite for desalination, even as the practical path to it remains contingent on a much larger piece of infrastructure getting built first.
Source: ANTARA News