Batam residents protest data centres as taps run dry in drought

Residents of Batam, an Indonesian island south of Singapore, have protested outside a new data centre cluster after water outages left some households unable to cook or shower. The Straits Times published the AFP report, the South China Morning Post carried the same account and The Japan Times ran a summary.

Water utility operator Air Batam Hilir blamed a "long drought" caused by low rainfall, which a strong El Nino cycle has made worse. Its spokesman, Ginda Alamsyah, said the drought had left the nearby Nongsa Reservoir very low and an electrical fault had disrupted supply further. An industry source told AFP the tech park gets its water from a different source, Duriangkang Reservoir.

Many residents still link the shortages to the data centres. When the outages were at their worst, dozens of people staged spontaneous protests outside Nongsa Digital Park, a special economic zone. Juniardi Adinda Sembiring Gurukinayan, a 54-year-old tradesman, said people in the district believed construction of the facilities was behind the problem. "We cannot eat rice without water. We cannot cook vegetables without water," he told AFP. At one protest in October, AFP saw a police officer filling buckets residents had brought to the park.

Sulastri, 38, said the water crisis had gone on for a year and got worse in the last six months. She said water handed out by the government from tanker trucks was "smelly" and "yellowish". Demonstrator Rahmat, 52, said people in the coastal village of Mata Ikan had been washing with seawater.

In October, Batam mayor Amsakar Achmad, who also heads the local government agency BP Batam, said the disruption "was not caused by data centres or AI or investors entering that sector" and was due to weather and climate, local media reported. In late September, authorities told developers they must build desalination plants to supply seawater for cooling.

Companies behind operating or planned data centres at the park include the Singapore-headquartered BW Digital, DayOne and Princeton Digital Group. Hong Kong-based Gaw Capital Partners, another owner, said it was "aware of the distress and frustration" among residents and pointed to its use of closed-loop water systems, which reuse water.

The building boom in Indonesia and Malaysia began after Singapore halted new data centre developments between 2019 and 2022. In Malaysia's Johor, data centre capacity has grown from 10 megawatts five years ago to 2.1 gigawatts, according to researcher James Chai of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. Near Kuala Lumpur, a developer withdrew its plans for a site in Kota Damansara in August after more than 9,000 people signed a petition against it.

BP Batam and Indonesia's ministry for economic affairs did not respond to AFP's requests for comment. Ginda said Air Batam Hilir is trying to increase the capacity of Batam's six reservoirs by dredging them, and cloud seeding is another option in dry periods.

Sources: South China Morning Post, Indonesians furious as Batam data centres drain taps: ‘we cannot cook without water’; The Straits Times, Can’t cook or shower: Indonesians take aim at data centres amid outages; The Japan Times, Can’t cook or shower: Indonesians take aim at data centers.