Man-Made Floods Plague Jakarta

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http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-04-21-voa22.cfm

Man-Made Floods Plague Jakarta

By Solenn Honorine
Jakarta
21 April 2009

With a population of 24 million people, greater Jakarta ranks among the 10 largest cities in the world. As in other megacities of the developing world, traffic jams, messy urban planning and burgeoning squatter areas plague the Indonesian capital. One of its chief problems is the flooding that affects more than two million of its inhabitants, especially during the rainy season, and the floods are mainly a man-made phenomenon.

When it rains in Jakarta, the entire city grinds to a standstill. Passersby huddle under street venders' awnings while young men, bare-chest and barefoot, spring up from nowhere to direct the barely moving lines of cars away from the most rapidly flooding streets.

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The predicted rise in the sea level in the coming years could make things worse. However, Hongjoo Ham, lead infrastructure specialist in the World Bank, says global warming is but a minor aspect of the problem.

"We're predicting a five-centimeter rise by 2025. Jakarta, itself, sinks by, on average, five centimeters per year. Jakarta is sinking for a very straightforward reason: It's because of ground-water extraction," he said. "This type of ground-water extraction drains the aquifer completely and it creates a vacuum. Then the weight of the buildings push it down and it fills the cavity of the aquifer and, therefore, Jakarta sinks."

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