Access to improved sanitation services is key to a healthy and productive population. Photo credit: iStock/DSCimage.
Residents of Pontianak, the provincial capital of West Kalimantan in Indonesia, will have access to climate-resilient, adequate, and safely managed sanitation services by 2030 under a government project. The project also covers the cities of Mataram and Semarang.
While approximately 77% of Indonesian households have access to basic sanitation facilities (like septic tanks), just 7% of households have access to safely managed sanitation that ensures safe disposal of domestic waste to wastewater treatment plants for further processing.
In Pontianak, 98.7% of households have septic tanks, however, there is an insufficient number of desludging trucks, limiting service delivery.
With so many households in the project cities facing inadequate sewerage and being prone to flooding, groundwater pollution and environmental and health risks are frequent occurrences.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is lending Indonesia $419.6 million under the Citywide Inclusive Sanitation Project, which aims to strengthen the sanitation systems for approximately 2.5 million people in the three cities. The project is designed based on the citywide inclusive sanitation principle, which ensures that everyone has access to appropriately handled sanitation services by integrating both sewered and nonsewered systems.
“This project stands as one of the largest inclusive sanitation projects in Indonesia supported by ADB to date, aligning seamlessly with our comprehensive initiatives aimed at addressing climate change,” said ADB Country Director for Indonesia Jiro Tominaga in a news release.
“ADB is pleased to continue working with Indonesia to expand access to improved sanitation services, which are key to a healthy and productive population.”
The project will improve and expand existing sanitation systems by constructing wastewater treatment plants with a combined daily capacity of 57,000 cubic meters and approximately 200 kilometers of sewer networks. It will enable 90% of the population in project cities (households connected to the sewer network and those with septic tanks served by desludging operators) to have access to the improved sanitation systems.
Design measures to ensure climate and disaster resilience have been incorporated, such as constructing elevated structures to guard the treatment plants against future flooding, implementing drainage systems at the sites to manage stormwater volumes, and installing a breakwater to mitigate the impact of high tides and flooding.
The project will concentrate efforts on improving fecal sludge management facilities, strengthening regulatory frameworks, and enhancing the operational efficiency of sanitation service operators in areas such as governance, digitization, and asset management.
The project will support the participating cities to prepare sanitation service plans. These plans will inform and guide future expansion of on- and off-site sanitation services, integrate climate resilience and disaster risk reduction measures, and mainstream gender and social inclusion.
The project will support integration of water supply and wastewater management into the local water utilities in the participating cities. Through capacity development and support for the preparation and implementation of relevant guidelines, assistance will be provided to the local water utilities to prepare and implement robust operational, asset management and maintenance plans, strengthen corporate governance; mitigate fiscal impacts; and improve operational performance.
To ensure effective sanitation management, community awareness on safely managed sanitation, hygiene, and health will be raised. The project will also support the cities and their local water utilities with the use of digital tools to support real-time monitoring of the sewer system and desludging trucks.
Four agencies in Pontianak share responsibility for wastewater service delivery: the Public Works and Spatial Planning Agency develops the domestic wastewater system; the Environmental Agency manages desludging services; the Health Agency is responsible for environmental sanitation; and the Housing and Settlements Agency is responsible for sanitation in slums.