Denpasar water utility kept output steady despite 15% raw-water shortfall

Denpasar — Denpasar’s municipally owned water utility, Perumda Air Minum Tirta Sewakadarma, reported a 15% reduction in its raw water supply during the 2023 dry season, while maintaining production at around 1,200 liters per second by constructing additional water channels, according to local media interviews with the utility’s technical director.

Local outlet Radar Bali, as cited by Bali Discovery, reported that the water deficit was confirmed by technical director Putu Yasa on Monday, 23 October 2023. He said the company was working to prevent service interruptions by building new channels to divert and store water during the prolonged drought.

According to these reports, the 15% decline affected raw water entering the system, rather than an across-the-board reduction in treated water delivered to customers. Yasa said the utility was “working hard” to keep production at approximately 1,200 liters per second despite lower river and source flows.

Utility response to the 2023 drought

Perumda Air Minum Tirta Sewakadarma, also known as PDAM Kota Denpasar, is responsible for piped water supplies in Denpasar. During the 2023 dry season, the utility reported that lower inflows forced it to optimize operations and build new channels so water could be retained when rainfall occurred upstream.

Tribun Bali reported that declining raw water volumes affected treatment operations at the utility, prompting the construction of diversion channels so water could be temporarily stored and processed as normal. According to the same report, these measures were considered effective enough to keep output at about 1,200 liters per second, despite the 15% drop in source water.

Bali Discovery, drawing on Radar Bali’s coverage, added that similar channel-based measures had been used during a Bali-wide drought in 2015, when water deficits reached around 30%. In that earlier episode, the channels enabled periodic capture of downstream water after rainfall in upstream areas, helping sustain production levels.

Neither report detailed neighborhood-level impacts such as pressure reductions, rationing schedules or specific service interruptions. No figures were provided for reservoir levels, contingency supplies or household demand at the time of the 2023 drought.

Dry season conditions and meteorological outlook

The water shortage occurred against the backdrop of a prolonged dry season in Bali in 2023. The Bali office of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG Bali) warned of extreme drought conditions in several parts of the island and predicted that drought would persist until mid-November 2023. BMKG Bali head Aminudin Al-Roniri said rain was expected to begin falling over roughly 60% of Bali in mid-November, with the remainder of the island seeing rain from December.

Separately, BMKG’s national forecasts for the 2023 dry season indicated that the peak of dry conditions would extend into November in Bali due to El Niño-related anomalies. International climate monitoring for October–December 2023 also found below-average rainfall across much of Indonesia, including Bali, during this period.

In this context, the utility’s emphasis on short-term storage and conservation reflected expectations that meaningful rainfall would not return until at least mid-November. Both Tribun Bali and Bali Discovery reported that Yasa urged residents to conserve and store water until the seasonal rains arrived.

What remains unclear

Publicly available reports from October 2023 confirm the 15% reduction in raw water and the 1,200 liters-per-second production target, but they do not specify the current production rate, the detailed configuration or capacity of the new channels, or the precise impact on individual neighborhoods in Denpasar.

Later meteorological analyses show that rainfall returned and intensified across Bali in late 2023 and early 2024, with BMKG Denpasar expecting the peak of the rainy season around January 2024 and monthly rainfall of 500–600 millimeters in Bali. However, no subsequent statement from the Denpasar city government or the utility in these sources quantifies how quickly local water supplies recovered after the 2023 drought.

Sources

• Tribun Bali - Air Baku PDAM Kota Denpasar Menyusut 15 Persen Akibat Kemarau
• Bali Discovery - Denpasar, Bali Water Works Under Pressure
• IFRC / ReliefWeb - Indonesia: Drought Response 2023, DREF Final Report (MDRID026)
• Tempo.co (English) - Drought Spreads to 35 Districts in Bali
• UN Indonesia / Seasonal Monitoring Bulletin Oct–Dec 2023
• Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi, dan Geofisika (BMKG)