Mon­day, Mei 03, 2010 (Solo­Pos): Water spurts up to more than 10 meters high when the water pump lever of the drilled-well is turned open, cre­at­ing rain­drops like in the sur­round­ing area. Those gath­er­ing around the well run away to avoid the waterdrops.

The drilled-well in Sum­berejo Vil­lage, Batuwarno Sub­dis­trict, Wono­giri was made in 2000. The spring that was founded by the local vil­lagers can pro­duce up to hun­dreds meter cubic of water per second.

Thanks to the spring, no less than 680 fam­i­lies in the vil­lage and sur­round­ing areas can now enjoy a year-long access to suf­fi­cient amount of clean water. They no longer need to walk kilo­me­ters away to fetch water.

What more sur­pris­ing is the fact that there are still more than 22 unex­plored and unex­ploited springs in the vil­lage and another 16 in Selop­uro Village.

All emerge after the com­mu­nity mem­bers of the two vil­lages trans­form their land into com­mu­nity forests.

“Before the com­mu­nity forests grown here, the land was arid and bar­ren. Water spring was located far from the vil­lages. How­ever, due to the refor­esta­tion, water now seems to spring every­where,” said Katmo, a vil­lager from Selopuro.

Com­mu­nal Work
Persepsi’s Vice Direc­tor, Taryanto Wijaya – who has been assist­ing to the peo­ple in Selop­uro and Sum­berejo in their endeavor to con­serve the envi­ron­ment, said that it was the com­mu­nity who found the spring.

Together they pushed aside rocks, drilled a well and installed a 6x450 watts water pump.

“A team with a task to man­age the well and evenly dis­trib­uted the water to the vil­lagers has also been estab­lished here,” said Taryanto.

Mean­while, in Selop­uro – accord­ing to a local tree-planting pio­neer, Mis­man – peo­ple built a dam to store water pro­duced by the spring. Vil­lagers can then make use of the water for their daily needs and to irri­gate their field. Also accord­ing to Mis­man, he and other vil­lagers need to trans­port 1.168 trucks of stone to build the dam.

Other pos­i­tive impacts of the com­mu­nity forests – apart from the newly emerged water springs – are new work oppor­tu­ni­ties. So far, the com­mu­nity has processed twigs of teak, mahogany, and other hard­wood trees into hand­i­crafts. Thus, they can ben­e­fit from the forests with­out log­ging them.

For many, twigs are use­less waste or, at the utmost, used only as fire­wood. How­ever, for Siman, they can be col­lected and processed into var­i­ous artis­tic furniture.

Twigs are usu­ally made into sofas, cab­i­nets or a set of table and chairs. The 5-cm in diam­e­ter twigs are arranged, assem­bled, and formed into fur­ni­ture. Some dec­o­rated with glass.

“We are cur­rently fin­ish­ing the order from PT Jawa­furni Lestari in Yogyakarta. Our busi­ness enter­prise is run by 6–8 employ­ees,” said Siman.

PT Jawa­furni Lestari is a com­pany that spe­cial­izes in export­ing fur­ni­ture made from cer­ti­fied wood. Siman is yet to widely mar­ket his prod­ucts to other com­pa­nies. – By: Suharsih