The sound of rubber sandals crunching on dry bamboo leaves echoes in the fading light of Sumur Bendung. Maia Ruda, a 58-year-old mother, walks down a steep, tricky path toward a narrow riverbed in Gunung Batur village, Cilegon, carrying an empty 15-liter (4-gallon) plastic jug on her back. The path gets slipperier and more dangerous as it winds down the valley, where it cuts through mossy stone and damp earth.
As the sun sets, other women with their own 15-liter jugs are already waiting, talking in Javanese as they gather around small drips of water coming from the rocks. The villagers use hollow bamboo stalks and large antap (Sterculia oblongata) leaves to guide the trickle into their containers. Filling a 15-liter jug takes a difficult 30 minutes.
For Maia and her neighbors, waiting for water at dusk is now part of daily life. Since there are no wells nearby, they rely completely on this underground water and spend hours in the gorge to collect enough water for their families.
“We’ve been living like this for the past four months,” Maia tells me in early August, resting briefly while her container fills. “We have to walk a kilometer from our village down a steep, slippery path to reach this riverbed source. And as we enter August, the water is dripping slower and slower.”
She explains that they use old mineral water containers because they’re light, strong, and can be carried home in cloth without breaking on the sharp rocks. By nightfall she will carry eight heavy jugs back up the cliff, enough to last her family almost a week.
As things get harder, the community has had to ration water strictly. At the local Al-Ma’ruf prayer house, a schedule called the sif system controls water collection. Groups of 15 households take turns in 12-hour shifts, from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn. Each week a family might get just two turns, one in the morning and one at night, approved by the neighborhood chief.
But the situation is getting worse every day. Four months ago a family could collect 20 gallons each turn. Now the water flow is so low that they get barely eight. “By September we don’t know what we’ll do if the water stops dripping altogether,” says Ali Asmudin, another resident.
Villagers get a small government relief package of two gallons per week, but this is far from enough for their daily needs. A permanent pipeline is still just a dream for a community that has faced droughts for many years.
The Rings of Fire and a Looming Super El Niño
While places like Gunung Batur are rationing every drop, meteorologists warn that this local hardship is just a sign of a much bigger climate problem.
Across Indonesia worsening water shortages are expected to deepen significantly in the coming months. The stakes this year extend far beyond crippled agricultural yields. As the drought intensifies, it threatens water supplies, compromises hydropower generation, and drastically increases the risk of widespread forest and land fires.
According to the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency, the country is bracing for a drier-than-normal season, with 437 seasonal zones — nearly half of Indonesia’s total land area — predicted to endure an unusually long and severe drought.
In June the World Meteorological Organization officially announced the start of El Niño, a major climate phenomenon where tropical Pacific waters warm significantly, disrupting weather worldwide. Current measurements show ocean temperatures are running far above average, officially placing this El Niño in the “strong” category with the potential to trigger severe droughts, heat, and extreme weather in the coming months. The announcement warned countries everywhere to prepare for record heatwaves, severe droughts, and more extreme weather.
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Teuku Faisal Fathani, head of Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysical Agency, points to alarming macro-indicators. “Based on our monitoring, current El Niño conditions have reached a strong category, driven by sea surface temperature anomalies.”
Adding to these worries, climate researchers from China’s State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics and Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency have found a new weather pattern. Warming is happening at the same time in three Pacific regions — near Indonesia, Central America, and South America — creating a large “warm ring” that covers areas usually kept cool by ocean currents.
“We have not observed a pattern this intense in the past 40 years,” says Dr. Widodo Setiyo Nugroho, a senior climate researcher at BRIN.
Ghosts of the Past Re-emerge From the Depths
About 99 kilometers (61 miles) from the capital of Jakarta, the disappearing water reveals strange reminders of past projects. As reservoirs shrink across Banten Province, pieces of human history are reemerging from the bottom of the lakes.
At the Somang pier in Lebak Regency, boatman Hussein waits for passengers who want to see what remains of the past. Since June falling water levels at the large Karian Dam have uncovered the remains of villages.
Built between 2015 and 2024, the Karian Dam project flooded 11 villages in four sub-districts: Sajira, Cimarga, Maja, and Rangkasbitung. People were moved to make way for a 1,773-hectare (7-square-mile) artificial lake meant to supply water to Jakarta and its suburbs. Now, as water levels drop by one to three meters (up to 10 feet), the roofs and yards of these submerged villages are starting to appear again.
Hussein steers his small wooden boat past brick foundations that stick out of the water. “I’ve lived here since I was a child,” he says quietly, watching a motorboat take visitors to see what remains of Somang. “Four years ago, we had to leave when our homes were flooded. For the past two years, I’ve worked as a ferryman, charging people five to ten thousand rupiahs to see what’s left of our old lives.”
Where families once farmed and children played, people now use the shrinking edges of the reservoir to wash clothes because their wells have dried up. Below the water, only brick foundations are left. Wooden doors, windows, and roof tiles were removed before the valley was flooded.
A Bleak Horizon
The problems seen in Cilegon and Lebak are expected to get much worse. Erma Yulihastin, a climate researcher from the National Research and Innovation Agency, says that models predict a Super El Niño from late 2026 to early 2027, which will supercharge global weather systems and trigger severe storms, droughts, and wildfires. Forecasts from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts show the peak will come in December 2026, with sea surface temperatures rising more than 4 degrees Celsius.
“Even February 2027 will still classify as super,” Yulihastin warns. If these predictions come true, Indonesia could face a long seven-month struggle with poor crop yields, serious food shortages, and high wildfire risks.
For people like Maia Ruda in Gunung Batur and Hussein, who watches his old village reappear in Somang, that future is already here, seen in every drop of water that grows scarcer.
Previously in The Revelator:
Photo Essay: Climate Change and Deforestation Collide in Indonesia’s Deadly Floods