At the height of the rainy season in early February, when torrential rain

fell on a daily basis and triggered floods in Bali, more than 50,000 homes
in Denpasar found themselves without any clean water for days.

The tap water company PDAM, owned by the Badung regency

administration, cut off its water supply after discovering two of its water
purification facilities were clogged with mud, trash and uprooted logs
carried by overflowing rivers. It took the PDAM days to clean up the
facilities and restore water quality to an acceptable level.

The episode spurred public outrage on both mainstream and social

media, with some pointing out the irony of a water scarcity taking place
during the rainy season. Others accused PDAM which last year
booked an annual profit of Rp 26 billion (US$1.95 million) of
negligence for failing to anticipate the floods and providing insufficient
response as it deployed only seven water trucks to aid its customers
during the crisis.

However, the ordeal, which forced many households to spend huge

sums of money to purchase bottled water, did result in one good thing: it
facilitated the birth of greater public awareness of the islands water
scarcity problem.
 A waiting game:
Residents of Tianyar village, Bali, place buckets in front of their homes to collect rain
water.(JP/Anggara Mahendra)

Lack of water has been Balis pink elephant in the room for decades.
Discussions on the growing gap between the islands water supply and
the everincreasing demand have been a staple among academics,
environmentalists and NGO activists.

Read also: Rus Alit: Keeping water flowing in rural areas

As early as 2009, research by the Japan International Cooperation

Agency (JICA) warned that the southern part of the island would suffer
from a water deficit by 2015. It projected a deficit of up to 2,500 liters per
second. Other studies carried out by local scholars yielded similar
results.

However, the realization that Bali was suffering from a lack of clean
water did not gain traction outside the realms of academia,
environmentalism and NGOs.

A majority of the islands population, especially those being spoiled by

easy access to clean water, were not even aware of the problem. Those
who were mistakenly concluded that the problem was exclusive to Balis
poor and arid regions in the east and north.

When nature fails: Children walk home from school under the scorching sun.
(JP/Anggara Mahendra)

It was this ignorance that for years has made water scarcity one of the
islands most unrecognized and therefore most neglected problems,
said activist Viebeke Lengkong.

Dubbed the matriarch of Balis AntiReclamation Movement, arguably the

islands biggest pro-environmental grassroots campaign, Viebeke is the
founder of Im An Angel, a charity organization that provides aid to poor
villagers in Karangasem regency, East Bali.

Karangasem boasts some of the islands most impoverished and arid

villages, where water scarcity has been a real problem for decades.

In Tianyar, a poverty-stricken region on the slopes of Mount Agung, Im

An Angel has assisted villagers in constructing at least 50 cubang, a
water storage tank for harvesting rainfall. Each cubang costs around Rp
23 million and can provide water for up to 25 families. During severe
drought periods, the organization usually sends water trucks to fill in the
empty cubing. It also provides free health services to women and school
supplies to their children.

Read also: Foundation campaigns to help East Sumba tackle water, electricity

issues

In yesteryears, many Balinese people thought that water scarcity was a

problem for the poor regions; now they begin to see that it is their
problem, too, Viebeke said.

It is also a truly pressing problem, she added, with three of the islands
four lakes suffering from silting, 260 out of 400 rivers drying up during
the dry season and saltwater intrusion expanding at settlements along
Balis southern coast.

The island needs to get its act together fast. A comprehensive solution
must be followed through with real actions, senior lecturer Stroma Cole
from the University of the West of England said during a recent
workshop on water scarcity.
Painful symptoms: The lack of clean water in Tianyar village, Bali, has lead to various
health problems.(JP/Anggara Mahendra)

Co-organized by Im An Angel and Udayana University, the workshop

brought together scholars, environmentalists, NGO activists, government
officials and figures from the tourism industry and traditional
communities to draft an action plan to deal with the problem.

Stroma, who studies water use at various tourism regions across the
world and has previously carried out studies in Bali, warned that a failure
to act would put local residents in a collision course with the tourism
industry Balis economic backbone and one of the primary culprits
behind soaring demand for clean water.

In her paper, Stroma pointed out that 100 tourists consume in 55 days
an amount of clean water that is enough for 100 rural families to last
three years. Now, picture Bali: a tiny island of around 4 million people
and annually receives more than 11 million tourists, and imagine the toll
on the islands water resources.

The solution for [Balis] water scarcity problem will have to include a
paradigm shift in our tourism approach. We must abandon the existing
mass tourism approach and embrace quality and sustainable tourism,
Viebeke said.

Other actions recommended in the workshop include lobbying for

unified, island-wide water management; tighter regulations on land
conversion and ground water use; campaigning for ecofriendly practices
targeting the tourism industry; and continuing assistance for NGOs
working on the preservation of water resources, such as IDEP
Foundations initiative to construct recharge wells in strategic locations
across Bali.