Banjarmasin still in water crisis, rainfalls gives no impact yet

Banjarmasin, S Kalimantan (ANTARA) - The government owned clean water company PDAM Bandarmasih deploys all water tanker to distribute clean water to its customers in various areas of the city which experienced water crisis in the last one week due to seawater intrusion. While, rainfalls gives no signifant impact.

Head PR of the company M Nur Wakil here on Monday (Sept 30, 2019) said up to 75 tank of water have been distributed on sunday (Sept 29, 2019) to customers who need. 

"Usually we distribute water a maximum of only 30 to 40 tanks, but yesterday it up to 75 tanks," he said. 

Employees, he added, forced to work overtime till 00.00 (midnight), because PDAM only has six tankers.

Thus, he said, to accelerate clean water distributed and to meet customers need, PDAM is assisted with three fire trucks.

According to M Nur, in the last few days, water distribution has been declined by 30 to 40 percent as a result of high seawater intrusion, especially at the PDAM's main raw water intake in Sungai Bilu.

The last check showed, the (Martapura River) water salinity has reached 3,500 miligram per liter. It means, the rainfalls in a few days has so far not been able to neutralize river water like before.