Jakarta Just Regained Control of Its Water Network. Now What?

When Dewi Puspitasari turns on the faucet at her South Jakarta home, the water runs shades of yellow and brown. Her home in East Cilandak sits on what used to be a swamp and sometimes her kitchen sink looks the part, with small chunks of sludge floating in the tap water.

She would blame the city for her water woes, but she's never received any help from them. In fact, Dewi's home, like millions of others in the Indonesian capital, isn't even connected to the pipes controlled by the city's two water suppliers. Instead, she dug a well. When the water still came out brown, she dug deeper with the hopes of striking the city's aquifer. The water remained murky. She now relies on an expensive water filter that needs to be changed every three months. And even then, the water in her home isn't safe enough to drink.

"The clean water pipes can't access this location," Dewi told me. "So, like it or not, we have to use the water from the well."

It's been 20 years since Gen. Suharto privatized the capital's water system, opening the doors for local leaders to split the city in half and sell it off to two foreign companies—PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja) and PT Thames PAM Jaya (now called Aetra Air Jakarta). Both were awarded the right to run the city's water supply through no-bid contracts that would last for 25 years.

The companies immediately faced a difficult reality with Jakarta's water networks. The pipes were old and poorly maintained. Many leak water directly into the ground. Others allow sewage and seawater to seep into the water supply, ensuring that what comes out of the tap is far from drinkable. But both firms promised to dramatically increase access to clean, piped-in water and reduce losses from leakage. Neither was able to fulfill these promises in full.

Today, an estimated 60 percent of Jakarta residents lack access to clean, piped-in water, according to estimates by the central governments statistics agency. City-wide, the water companies need an additional 7,800 kilometers of new pipes to be able to service the rest of the city, according to one report. That's nearly eight times the length of Java.

Independent assessments found that both water networks combined only service around 35 percent of the capital's residents. The estimates are a far cry from the 50 percent connection rates reported by the city-owned operator PD PAM Jaya, which licensed the concessions to the two private companies.

Still, both companies reported a significant rise in their subscriber base, as well as efforts to provide connections for the capital's urban slums thanks to help from nonprofits like Mercy Corps. But even these efforts pale in comparison to the sheer volume of Jakarta residents with no access at all to either of these water networks.

And in parts of the city where residents can access the water network, the connections are so weak that people still need to find other sources for their daily needs. One woman, her name's Kartini, told me that her house in Penjaringan, North Jakarta, was connected to the network, but that she still needs to buy additional jerry cans of water every day at the cost of Rp 20,000 ($1.48 USD) a piece. To save money, she only showers once a day.

"The PAM water is sometimes flowing," Kartini told me as she showed the water meter in her house. "But most of the time, I have to buy water."

So how do most Jakartans get their water? From ground wells. But the problem here is that these same ground wells that service 65 percent of the population are actually destabilizing the entire city. When most of the city relies on individual household wells for water, Jakarta's shallow aquifers (the underground area where water lives) are quickly drained. So residents respond by boring deeper into the Earth, draining even more of the ground water in the process.

Eventually the ground above it all starts to collapse and the entire city starts to sink. Today, Jakarta is sinking at a rate of 25 centimeters a year, with no signs of slowing its descent. Experts say it's now pushing Jakarta closer to the edge of ecological catastrophe.

And even then, none of the city's residents can drink what comes out of the tap. Instead, Jakartans citywide purchase bottled water from foreign companies like Danone—a reality that adds to the fact that Indonesia is now the world's seventh-largest market for bottled water.

In 2014, Danone, which controls about 40 percent of the bottle water market, announced plans to double its production to reach as much as 20 billion liters annually to meet rising demand. That's enough water to fill eight olympic sized swimming pools a year.

A coalition of nonprofits and activist groups filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court to challenge the privatization of Jakarta's water. On 10 Oct., the court ruled in their favor, ordering the city to cancel the concession contracts. The Supreme Court's decision upholds an earlier ruling by the Central Jakarta District Court to the same effect.

"It was a monumental victory," Andreas Harsono, the Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch, told me. "Not only for Indonesia, it was a victory for all citizens in the world."

Andreas spent three years investigating the privatization of the capital's water networks. He told me that the heart of the issue wasn't privatization itself, but the poor quality of service by these foreign companies when it came to providing the city with a necessary service.

"Can all Jakarta residents access clean water?" Andreas said. "I don't think so. If that's the case, then the government has failed to fulfill the most basic needs of their people."

Both water companies had previously signed a Memorandum of Understanding that restructured the ownership of the networks and put greater authority in the hands of PD PAM Jaya—the city's own water company. PD PAM Jaya technically owns the water network. But in reality, PD PAM Jaya is an owner in name only since it had already sold concessions to the two private companies.

The Supreme Court ruling would effectively end the privatization of Jakarta's water supply, but to what effect? Water rates rose 40 percent between 2013 and 2015. And there's no indication that PD PAM Jaya has the funds, or the capacity, to fix the city's water network.

Officials with Palyja and Aetra Air Jakarta are reportedly trying to figure out what to do next. The president director of Palyja Erlan Hidayat declined to comment on the matter, only saying the company was still studying the best way to move forward.

But even with the Supreme Court's decision, the city still has a long way to go, explained Andreas. We might have regained control of our water, but PD PAM Jaya is still in need of some serious reforms.

The city-owned company has already made some efforts to get its self straight. It used to be heavily in debt, but it says it cleared the books of Rp 2.3 trillion ($170 million USD) in debt in 2016 and it's now ready to run the network. But it remains largely an untested operator.

"The government should gather a team to act on the Supreme Court ruling," Andreas told me. "Clean water is a basic human right."