Inside Bali’s Water Crisis

It’s not an easy sell but would you believe Bali is currently in the midst of its worst ever drought?

“Right now it’s raining so much anyone you talk to about a ‘water crisis’ will laugh at your face. It’s like selling ice to Eskimos,” says Julien Goalabre, a spokesperson for IDEP, a Bali-based NGO monitoring what many are calling a “water crisis” on the island.

According to a series of scientific studies, Bali is in the midst of an “unseen” water crisis that could threaten both the future of tourism as well as the island itself. The culprit? Bali’s booming tourism industry.

As much as 65% of the island’s groundwater is being used by the tourism industry with hotels rooms and villas using around 3000 litres a day. That’s without taking into account the water used by pools, excessive showering, construction projects, and, the most wasteful human activity on the island, golf courses.

In total, the tourism sector has caused 260 of Bali’s 400 or so rivers to run dry and lowered the island’s water table by some 60 percent. Bali’s biggest body of fresh water, Lake Buyan, has dropped 3.5 meters and salt water intrusion into the aquifer has been found up to a kilometre inland some areas.

Bali’s biggest body of fresh water, Lake Buyan, has dropped 3.5 meters

With Bali set to welcome seven million foreign visitors in 2018 the issue is going to get worse before it gets better, unless the government and tourism sector step in.

“The more tourism goes up, the more the level of the water table goes down,” says the IDEP spokesperson.

“So in the short term, water is not a problem. But in the long term it will be a much bigger issue because the water is table is going down, and in all coastal areas there is salt water intrusion.”

For many of Bali’s rice farmers, water scarcity is already posing problems.

“Before we don’t have a problem with the water but this time when the summer season coming we have problem with the water. Sometime have water, sometime not, like that,” says Wayan, a former rice farmer from the Cemagi area, on Bali’s west coast.

The water shortages are so severe in some areas farmers have resorted to stealing water from neighbouring properties, placing Bali’s 11th Century UNESCO World Heritage listed Subak farming system at risk.

“We have problem sometime the farmer will come at night to the rice field and taking the water for another rice field. So that is a problem for Bali now that the water is gone,” says Wayan.

Reflecting the lack of reliable information surrounding the issue, when asked what he thought was behind the disappearing water, Wayan said he wasn’t sure.

“I don’t know where the water has gone. Maybe global warming or something like that,” he says.

Bali is now locked in a race to prevent its all important ground water aquifer from being contaminated by salt water intrusion, a scenario which would be disastrous for farmers and tourism operators alike.

“Coastal areas where aquifers continue to be over-exploited will suffer further leakage of salt water into groundwater, which is forever non-reversible, meaning total dependence on expensive desalination plants to treat seawater for Bali residential, agriculture and tourism water supplies,” explains Ida Bagus Putu Bintana, a civil engineering researcher at the University Politknik Negeri Bali.

There is, however, a cheap and ready-made solution.

There is, however, a cheap and ready-made solution. A system of re-charge wells, with a proven track record in places such as India, could solve the water crisis for as little as $USD1 million.

“We just need money. Someone needs to invest in it. It would cost one million dollars. That’s a lot of money but at the same time it’s not a lot of money at all. In terms of the money that circulates in Bali it is nothing,” says the IDEP spokesperson.

The clock is ticking.

“The more we take water out of the ground the more we create a gap for salt water to fill that gap because there is a constant enormous pressure the ocean is putting on the land,” he says.

“It’s what you call the tragedy of the commons – when we all consume a common resource out of self-interest leading to our own demise. It’s like soaring the branch we are sitting on,” he says.