Eastern Java Facing Severe Water Shortages Thanks To Deforestation

"Water supplies in East Java, which has suffered from serious forest destruction, are being constantly depleted due to increasing demands from industrial and domestic users, sparking fears of further water crises in the future. Such crises would affect more than 23,000 hectares of rice fields across the densely populated province.

The executive director of the East Java branch of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Sardiyoko, said the number of water sources in the province was continuously declining.

Currently only 1,500 cubic meters of water could be allotted per person annually, which meant that existing water supplies were not enough to meet the needs of about 34 million people in East Java during the dry season, he said. "In Indonesia alone, 80 percent or 168 million of its people are threatened by shortages of clean water, even though there are around 300 local water utilities (PDAM)," he told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

Statistics show that the amount of ground water used by industry in Mojokerto increased by 53 percent last year to about 16 million cubic meters, while in Sidoarjo the industrial consumption of water rose by 48 percent to around 13 million cubic meters. In Pasuruan, industry used up to 33 million cubic meters last year, an increase of 29 percent over the previous year."

EDIT

http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=31162

if Java "goes bust", the flow of people into the region is well into the tens of millions. It would create a humanitarian crisis the likes of which the world may not have seen in a long, long time.