Panca Nugraha, Mataram – Hundreds of farmers in West Lombok have protested against an almost completed water pipeline project, fearing water shortages for crops.
The Rp 110 billion (US$12.2 million) project would divert 25 percent of the available volume of water from the Treng Wilis springs in the southern part of the West Lombok regency, in an area which has constantly been hit by drought.
Farmers in Treng Wilis have raised fears that supply of water for their own farms could be seriously negatively affected.
"We oppose the project since it will make us face water shortages. Water from the Treng Wilis spring irrigates rice fields in a number of villages," Amaq Rumiati, a farmer from Perian village in Montong Gading district, told The Jakarta Post.
The Treng Wilis spring has so far provided water for 3,000 hectares of farmland in two districts.
The farmers, Amaq said, could harvest rice three times annually thanks to the spring.
Rumiati said farmers were worried they would end up like other farmers in Central Lombok, where sources of irrigation have been drying up while the tap water company has been extracting water from the area for consumers.
The farmers staged a rally against the project at the province's legislative council building in the capital Mataram last week.
However the construction of the pipeline project is already 80 percent complete.
The executive director of the NTB chapter Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Ali Usman Rahim, warned that if the administration insisted on continuing the project, it could raise the poverty level in the district, especially among farmers in upstream areas.
He suspected commercial and not public interests had influenced the implementation of the project. "We believe the project is just for commercial purposes. The pipeline from Treng Wilis is actually not intended to help underprivileged people in the south," said Ali.
Based on a survey conducted by a consultant firm in Bali in 2009, the spring's total water capacity amounted to 416 liters per second, while the PDAM project uses 14-inch diameter pipes able to take off up to 162 liters of water per second.
Ali said a conflict of interest may occur between farmers and the PDAM if farmers later face water shortages affecting their farms.
Ali said that if the East Lombok regency administration aimed to provide water for people in the southern part of the regency, then the Rp 110 billion in state funds spent on the project should have been used to build the proposed Pandan Dure dam.
The legislative council's deputy speakers, Suryadi J.P and Lalu Halik Iskandar, told the farmers they would ask the East Lombok regency administration to review the pipeline project. "We will ask the local administration to review the project and to seek a solution for the people," said Suryadi.