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Kick-off Meeting on the Construction and Capacity Building for the Infiltration Ponds Pilot Project for Sibolangit Spring

USAID IUWASH PLUS held a kick-off meeting on the construction and capacity building of the infiltration ponds pilot project for Sibolangit spring.

The meeting participants were the KKMARA (spring vulnerable assessment and action plan) team of Sibolangit spring, implementing technical unit managing Bukit Barisan forest park, and LPPM USU. The members of the KKMARA team include PDAM Tirtanadi, North Sumatra’s office for water resources, human settlement, and spatial planning, forestry office, Bappeda, and the development bureau.

During the meeting, USAID IUWASH PLUS introduced LPPM USU to the KKMARA team. In the next few months, LPPM USU will assist USAID IUWASH PLUS to support the KKMARA team to implement the pilot project on infiltration ponds.

Through the pilot project, USAID IUWASH PLUS will support the construction of 15 infilatration ponds to return water debit of Sibolangit spring. At the same time, the project will use the pilot project to improve the capacity of the KKMARA team so that they are able to implement the infiltration ponds independently.

“Bappeda and all stakeholders in North Sumatra province will support the implementation of the pilot project of 15 infiltration ponds construction for Sibolangit spring,” said Iqbal Mahyudan, the representative from Bappeda.

The infiltration ponds construction is one of important measures to save Sibolangit spring. Based on the spring vulnerable assessment carried out by the KKMARA team and USAID IUWASH PLUS in 2019, the spring’s water debit has been decreasing by 27 liters per second every year.

As a result, PDAM Tirtanadi is at risk of suffering a raw water crisis in 2030, meanwhile the PDAM uses the Sibolangit to serve around 20 to 30 percent of its total 450 thousand customers in Medan city.
Thus, the KKMARA recommends the construction of around 2,300 infiltration ponds.

To ease the capacity building activities, the pilot project will be conducted in areas easily accessed by the government and community.

In addition to the pilot project, USAID IUWASH (the predecessor program of USAID IUWASH PLUS) and Coca-Cola Foundation Indonesia (CCFI) had actually built 650 infiltration ponds for Sibolangit between 2014 and 2015.