Semarang City Government-BBWS Strengthens Drainage System Handling Floods

SEMARANG - The Semarang City Government (Pemkot) collaborated with the Pemali Juana River Basin Center (BBWS) to strengthen the drainage system to deal with flood problems, especially in East Semarang.

"The Semarang City Government cannot move alone because it requires also a pattern of cooperation, one of which is BBWS," said Semarang Mayor Hevearita Gunaryanti Rahayu as reported by ANTARA, Monday, June 12.

Hevearita's nickname explained that both the Semarang City Government and Pemali Juana BBWS shared roles ranging from sedimentation dredging, addition of pumps, floodgates, construction of embankments, to retention ponds, to strengthen the drainage system in the eastern region of Semarang as a solution to overcome flooding.

"Alhamdulillah, this cross-agency collaboration runs on the right track," he said.

According to him, the addition of pumps and floodgates is one of the keys in strengthening drainage so that water flow is expected to move quickly downstream during the rainy season.

In the Tenggang River, BBWS built up to eight floodgates from the original two floodgates, reinforced by four pump units at Muktiharjo Kidul Retention Pool, each unit with a capacity of 1,500 liters/second.

Likewise with the drainage of the Soaphor River, BBWS will add seven pumps at the Kandang Kebo Pump House and the addition of eight floodgates at the Sringin Pump House from the original two floodgates to 10 floodgates.

The addition of pump facilities and sluice gates, he said, was accompanied by a number of normalizations and dredging of sedimentation carried out by the Semarang City Public Works (DPU) Office and BBWS Pemali Juana.

Other collaborations, such as in the Tenggang River, cleaning up garbage and hyacinth are the roles of the DPU. Meanwhile, the normalization package from Jalan Raya Kaligawe to the Sukarela Tlogosari Bridge by BBWS.

A number of these solutions are also strengthened by the existence of a number of retention ponds in the Tenggang River Muktiharjo Kidul and Tlogosari, including plans to build a retention pond on the Slop River this year.