Jakarta to start building sewage tunnel

9 March, 2010

The city administration in Jakarta, Indonesia, announced that it was building a new sewage tunnel system.

The scheme will channel household liquid waste to a plant that will recycle it into raw water.

The project is being carried out in partnership with the central government.

The government will use a IDR3.8 trillion (USD412.5M) loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency for the initial construction of pipes and the plant.

“We chose a foreign loan because the private sector cannot afford to fund an infrastructure project on this scale,” Governor Fauzi Bowo told reporters after meeting with representatives from the Public Works Ministry at the start of March.

The city will provide IDR700 billion (USD76.2M) of the total cost.

The plant will turn liquid waste, including from septic tanks, kitchens and bathrooms, into raw water before flushing it away into nearby rivers or dams.

In the first stage of the project, which is expected to start in the middle of 2011, a team from the city and the government will construct the central zone project that will run from Setia Budi in central Jakarta to a plant in the north of the city, via a 1.8m diameter pipe.

The whole scheme is expected to be operational by 2020.