Development Methods for the Formulation of Community Empowerment-Based Oxbow Stream Utilization Models in Citarum River

Abstract

Citarum River stretches wide and long through village and city lands with straight, winding paths, and meanders. In the meander section, sediment deposits occur which result in the stunted flow causing floods or overflowing water out of the river. To overcome this problem, river shortcuts were constructed to straighten the stream, which results in disconnected reaches called oxbow rivers. This study presents a method development of a community empowerment-based oxbow rivers utilization which taking a case study on one of the ten oxbow rivers located along the Citarum River. The selected oxbow river is the one that located in Cibarangbang, Baleendah Village of West Java province with a length of 860.36 m, 10 m width, river bank height of 4.97 m and area of 100 ha. The utilization of oxbows is aimed to address technical and socio-economic problems through either of these three main approaches: 1. oxbow river as a means of conservation/revitalization of rivers by maintaining the function of oxbow lakes as a water reservoir, e.g., by making an impoundment, an inlet and outlet structures, a maintenance road, etc; 2. utilizing the area for public infrastructure and facilities through land reclamation; 3. using the area as a tourism site.