The Long Battle against the Auspicious Lord of the Waters Dutch and Indonesian endeavours to control the River Solo in East Java
In Java the downstream region of the Solo River: the Solo Valley, remains a problem area because water control there is inadequate. Although Indonesian engineers are currently working hard to improve the situation the Solo, as Dutch engineers discovered around 1900 when a giant irrigation project of theirs ended in disaster, is not easy to control. This episode in colonial irrigation history will be elucidated in this article. The story of the Solo works is remarkable in itself and instructive to modern engineers, not to mention topical. Though it was finally abandoned the project has remained a subject of discussion up until the present day!By Wim Ravesteijn
In a letter dated 29 October 1887 the Resident of Surabaya, C.H.A. van der Wijk, informed the director of the Civil Public Works Department for the Netherlands East Indies that the situation in Bengawan Jero, one of the Solo Valley districts, was so pitiful that for part of the year people were forced to live in flooded houses, camping on raised couches, or attached to bamboo rafts. The problem was not just that of persistent flooding in the rainy season; in the dry season rice cultivation suffered because of the scarcity water. All in all, the 720,000 or so Solo Valley inhabitants led a sorry existence, but despite everything the Solo River, 540 km long and the longest river in Java, was still known as the Bengawan: the auspicious Lord of the Waters. The letter from Van der Wijck was instrumental in prompting the Public Works Department, after forty years of planning, finally to swing into action and set up the biggest irrigation project in the history of the Netherlands East Indies in 1893.The project emanated from a master plan for the entire valley, the aim of which was to improve drainage and the irrigating of approximately 156,000 hectares of agricultural land. The idea was to force up the level of the Solo by about eight metres thus allowing water to be transported to the rice fields along a main canal 165 kms long plus a network of smaller canals with a collective length of 900 kms. There were also plans to redirect the Solo that flowed into the Madura Strait at Surabaya, transporting with it so much silt that it was feared shipping movements would be seriously hampered. The plan was to excavate through a ridge of hills and cause the river to flow out into the Java Sea. The recoursing would necessitate the digging of a canal to provide shipping links between Surabaya and the hinterland and drinking water supplies for the area cut off from the Solo. It was a highly ambitious project and one that could be termed impressive, even on a global scale. The project did materialize; its execution was entrusted to the engineer J.L. Pierson who also drew it up. By 1898, though, when it became apparent that it was leading to a major deficit, J.Th. Cremer, the Minister for the Colonies, ordered that it be abandoned. He then set up a weighty advisory commission consisting of four technical experts and in 1900 a comprehensive and thorough report came out recommending that the project be continued in a modified form. In 1903 the then Minister for the Colonies, A.W.F. Idenburg, decided to drop the project altogether. In so doing he contravened the commission's conclusions, the wide support that the project enjoyed among engineers, and even the opinions of leading Ethical Politics supporters of the day such as C.Th. van Deventer, who felt that the project fitted in well with a policy introduced in 1901 aimed at improving public welfare. Idenburg's alternative was to provide a small-scale improvement programme and the creation of a number of large reservoirs that would be particularly beneficial to the people of the Bengawan Jero region (around 60,000 souls). The deferment and subsequent cancellation of the Solo works gave rise to great consternation in engineering circles. On various occasions hydraulic engineers tried to give the project new impetus, not least because the alternative measures presented no satisfactory solutions. However, their efforts were in vain.
Background
The Civil Public Works Department (first a Public Works Bureau) was established in 1854 after a series of famines in Java caused, to no small extent, by the prevailing policy of exploitation. In its early decades the Department stood in the shadow of the Civil Service. The construction of dams and other waterworks was predominantly initiated and executed by Residents (using forced labour) who, when confronted with technically complicated tasks, would occasionally turn to the Public Works Department for the help of an engineer. In such circumstances irrigation engineers were only able to construct a few headworks. By 1885 the Department had gained greater autonomy, which meant that engineers were able to develop and realize plans for the whole of Java according to the 'scientific' methods they upheld, i.e. carrying out investigative research before designing and laying entire irrigation systems. What the Solo Valley works proved was that modern large-scale approaches could also fail and that failure could, in the first place, be ascribed to (financial) economic concerns. The engineers had been given plenty of leeway in 1885 but this began to be curtailed when profitability became an issue. In 1897 the Profitability Commission was introduced to assess the economic viability of projects, especially in relation to land tax. Since there were civil servants as well as engineers on this commission, this again gave civil servants an important say in matters. The Solo project was extremely expensive. Originally budgeted at around 19 million guilders, the commission later decided that it would cost nearer 50 million. Most of the Solo commission members found that the project was running well but there was one, the engineer J.E. de Meyier, the Public Works Department director in the Netherlands Indies, who had his reservations. It was bowing to his views that Idenburg's decision to halt the Solo project was taken. In Ethical Politics attention was turned to improving agriculture and this placed the profitability discussion in a different light. When an agricultural expert was introduced to the Profitability Commission, the manoeuvrability of engineers was even more restricted. Silt, essential for soil fertility, became a central issue and renewed objections were raised to the Solo works. With the long canals that were planned would silt actually reach far-away fields? How could agriculture be co-ordinated in such a large region? These were the new questions now being asked. In short, the prevailing views of Ethical Politics made the project look less attractive. The planned dam and large main canal structures also came in for heavy criticism. Because of the new policy and the Solo Valley disappointment, a preference developed for small-scale engineering projects. Inspired by the local population's small reservoir techniques, a number of small and largereservoirs were created in the Solo Valley. Another spin-off of the Solo works and Ethical Politics was that lower level administrative advisors were given more tasks. By the twenties the turbulence surrounding the Solo works had abated, only to be followed by a modern irrigation network boom including large projects.
Indonesian efforts
The Dutch had done much to ease the water problems in the Solo Valley but when they departed they left behind them what still amounted to a problem area. After Independence, new master plans were drawn up: a Japanese plan (1974) to tackle the whole Solo basin and a Canadian one (1986), reminiscent of the Dutch plan presented in the 1900 Solo report. Only components of each were ever realized. As part of the Japanese plan, two large reservoirs, one in the Solo Valley, were created. The Canadians suggested building a canal that would link the Solo to the Java Sea, just as the Dutch had suggested about a hundred years before. The intention, however, was not to move the estuary of the river but rather to provide a diversion canal. Recently the Indonesians excavated a narrow canal there in the hope that (with overseas aid) they might one day be able to widen it. In effect, by constructing small engineering works and large reservoirs the new authorities were repeating the same mistakes made by the colonial authorities before them, with the result that the area still suffers from periodic flooding and droughts. Even the Department's project offices were flooded in 1988. Fortunately the much-needed master plan for the entire basin is in the offing and project managers are using existing plans, the Dutch one included. Apparently the Dutch plan had not been forgotten in the Solo Valley either, because in the early nineties an inhabitant wrote to the local authorities urging them to complete the partially excavated main canal that had once been designed by the Dutch.
Wim Ravesteijn (1954) is a lecturer at Delft University of Technology where he is affiliated to the Department of Philosophy and the History of Technology within the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management. He is involved in water control from historical and international points of view and also in the history of the Public Works Department in the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia. He gained his doctorate in 1997 with the publication of De zegenrijke heeren der wateren. Irrigatie en staat op Java, 1832-1942 ('The Auspicious Lords of the Waters. Irrigation and the Colonial State in Java, 1832-1942'), published by Delft University Press.