Life in a City Without Water: Anxious, Exhausting and Sweaty

[ekunadam_enkanna]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/world/asia/india-water-crisis.html

 

CHENNAI, India — When the water’s gone, you bathe in what drips out of the air-conditioner. You no longer allow yourself the luxury of an evening shower at the end of a steamy summer’s day. You sprint down two flights of stairs with plastic pots as soon as a neighbor tells you the water tanker is coming.

Every day, 15,000 tankers ferry water from the countryside into the city. Everywhere you look, rows of bright neon plastic water pots are lined up along the lanes, waiting.

This is life in Chennai, a city of nearly five million on India’s southeastern coast.

The rains from last year’s monsoon season were exceptionally weak. By the time summer came with its muggy, draining heat, the city’s four major water reservoirs had virtually run dry.

 

Chennai has struggled with water for years. Either there’s not enough rain or there’s way too much rain, which floods in the streets before trickling out into the Bay of Bengal.

But the problem is not just the caprice of nature. Gone are the many lakes and fields that once swallowed the rains. They have since been filled in and built over. Land is too expensive to be left fallow.

Even groundwater is spent in many neighborhoods, over-extracted for years as a regular source of water, rather than replenished and stored as a backup.

 

And so now, little comes out of Bhanu Baskar’s taps at home, which is why she skips a shower on the days she doesn’t need to go out. She saves the water for her grown children, who both have office jobs and who both need a daily shower.

 

 

“It’s very uncomfortable,” said Ms. Baskar, 48, trying to hide her shame. “It’s very tough.”

“It’s not hygienic, also,” she said.

Chennai was primed for this crisis. The city gets most of its water each year from the short, heavy monsoon that begins in October and a few pre-monsoon showers. The trick is to capture what comes and save it for the lean times.

Chennai requires every building to catch the rainwater from its rooftops and pour it back into the earth, but that has not been enough to stop either drought or flood. So the city spends huge amounts of money scooping water from the sea, churning it through expensive desalination plants and converting it into water that residents can use.

Sekhar Raghavan, 72, a lifelong Chennai resident and the city’s most outspoken supporter of better rainwater harvesting, finds this absurd.

“Some of us knew this crisis would come,” he said. “For us, in Chennai, harvesting means putting every drop of water back into the ground.”

And then there’s climate change. It doesn’t bear direct blame for Chennai’s water crisis, but it makes it worse.

 

 

The city is hotter than before. Maximum temperatures have on average gone up by 1.3 degrees Celsius (or over 2 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950, according to Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. In an already hot tropical city — often above 90 degrees Fahrenheit and very humid in the summer — that means water evaporates faster and the demand for it rises.

The seeds of the crisis can be found in Velachery, a neighborhood named after one of Chennai’s many lakes. The lake was once deep and wide, but as the city grew, portions of it were filled in 20 years ago to make room for private homes.

P. Jeevantham was one of the first residents in Velachery when it was developed. He built a slender, three-story apartment building, and manages a tiny shop selling everyday provisions on the ground floor.

What remained of the lake was deep and clean back then. That didn’t last for long. Because the city’s water supply was erratic, Mr. Jeevantham drilled a bore well to draw up water from the aquifer beneath Chennai. So did all his neighbors, up and down the block.

 

 

 

 

[kevinUsa]

bhayya  drought is an economy

drought is an opportunity

Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts Paperback – November 15, 2017

 

 

[ekunadam_enkanna]

15 minutes ago, kevinUsa said:

bhayya  drought is an economy

drought is an opportunity

Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts Paperback – November 15, 2017

 

 

That's one of UNintended consequences.  When there is no water to be found at 600 feet, where can they get water from? If there is no water in 300 kms radius even at 600 feet, where do they get water from? 

 

[kevinUsa]

3 minutes ago, ekunadam_enkanna said:

That's one of UNintended consequences.  When there is no water to be found at 600 feet, where can they get water from? If there is no water in 300 kms radius even at 600 feet, where do they get water from? 

 

go to 400km

thats all is there any other solution

bro water is 2nd highest  commodity on world after oil.

I remember back in 2016 water business  around the world is 400Bn$$.

Its all us we made mistakes we  have to pay for it. there is no other solution

the current situation is because of us we   have suffer and we  have to pay for it.

 everyone liked when cities were expanding.

 ma babu 1978 after his graduation agriculture chestunnaru.

he was saying yesterday never seen weather like this  past 40 years.

last decade lo  the situation got worse.

 

 

 

[ekunadam_enkanna]

23 hours ago, kevinUsa said:

go to 400km

thats all is there any other solution

bro water is 2nd highest  commodity on world after oil.

I remember back in 2016 water business  around the world is 400Bn$$.

Its all us we made mistakes we  have to pay for it. there is no other solution

the current situation is because of us we   have suffer and we  have to pay for it.

 everyone liked when cities were expanding.

 ma babu 1978 after his graduation agriculture chestunnaru.

he was saying yesterday never seen weather like this  past 40 years.

last decade lo  the situation got worse.

 

 

 

What if there is no water in 2000 km radius? That's where we are heading. Phucket, Thailand and Chennai are on the same latitude. Phucket is facing the same water problem as Chennai does, but with a lesser population. 

India population in 1978 was 665M, majority of people living in the rural area on subsistence farming. There were no luxuries. Luxuries require more domestic output. That's what happened, people started second crops, drilling bore wells, thereby depleting all aquifers. There is no go back to subsistence farming. 

Overpopulation, coupled with luxuries, can destroy the human species as we see today.

 

[MobileMusic]

14 minutes ago, ekunadam_enkanna said:

What if there is no water in 2000 km radius? That's where we are heading. Phucket, Thailand and Chennai are on the same latitude. Phucket is facing the same water problem as Chennai does, but with a lesser population. 

India population in 1978 was 665M, majority of people living in the rural area on subsistence farming. There were no luxuries. Luxuries require more domestic output. That's what happened, people started second crops, drilling bore wells, thereby depleting all aquifers. There is no go back to subsistence farming. 

Overpopulation, coupled with luxuries, can destroy the human species as we see today.

 

Such cities could collapse under the weight of their own over-population. The consumption of resources is unbelievable. Why not learn from other countries like China and what they did 40 years ago? There is no need to learn anything new or reinvent any wheel. We could adopt their painful learning to our gain.

[ekunadam_enkanna]

Just now, MobileMusic said:

Such cities could collapse under the weight of their own over-population. The consumption of resources is unbelievable.

If cities collapse, people can migrate elsewhere. What if 5% of Indian population die every year due to this water crisis? 

[MobileMusic]

3 hours ago, ekunadam_enkanna said:

If cities collapse, people can migrate elsewhere. What if 5% of Indian population die every year due to this water crisis? 

People flock to places where jobs, schools, amenities and entertainment exist. Unless businesses relocate to remote areas, it would be hard for people to relocate.

What factors did they address out of these for our country to flourish?

• water (mostly drought or floods - we are at the mercy of nature) - I heard TG is self-sufficient on water now.
• electricity - check? (I heard they are generating enough)
• transportation - check? (some cities are worse than others. Or, are they all getting worse?)
• over-population

They have 5 years to resolve water crisis or face the music

[ekunadam_enkanna]

6 minutes ago, MobileMusic said:

People flock to places where jobs, schools, amenities and entertainment exist. Unless businesses relocate to remote areas, it would be hard for people to relocate.

What factors did they address out of these for our country to flourish?

• water (mostly drought or floods - we are at the mercy of nature) - I heard TG is self-sufficient on water now.
• electricity - check? (I heard they are generating enough)
• transportation - check? (some cities are worse than others. Or, are they all getting worse?)
• over-population

They have 5 years to resolve water crisis or face the music.

At least 40% or 500M people need to relocate. There is no remote area in India that can accommodate that many people. It is one thing for 100 people to move to some place in Himachal Pradesh, but quite another thing for 500M to relocate.

Yes, governments and people need to solve the water problem, since relocation of people to another area is impossible, so is bringing water daily on trains for 10 million people.

On the other hand, politicians are busy trying to stay in the power.

[MobileMusic]

2 hours ago, ekunadam_enkanna said:

At least 40% or 500M people need to relocate. There is no remote area in India that can accommodate that many people. It is one thing for 100 people to move to some place in Himachal Pradesh, but quite another thing for 500M to relocate.

Yes, governments and people need to solve the water problem, since relocation of people to another area is impossible, so is bringing water daily on trains for 10 million people.

On the other hand, politicians are busy trying to stay in the power.

Those are HUGE and unmanageable numbers!

It is unbelievable they are giving away tons of money just for having agricultural land (5K for each acre with NO limit), getting married, voting, etc. No government gives money to a new couple in other countries. And they are encouraging people to produce more babies? Maybe they’ll start giving money for each child produced as bonus. That’s insane, illiterate and downright irresponsible!

[MobileMusic]

58 minutes ago, ekunadam_enkanna said:

If cities collapse, people can migrate elsewhere. What if 5% of Indian population die every year due to this water crisis? 

Zombies and aliens exist only in movies 

[Variety_Pullayya]

india venakki vellali ante bhayam vesthundi..worried about next generation