Why India's Chennai Has Run Out of Waterhttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48797399Chennai (formerly Madras), the capital of India's southern Tamil Nadu state, is gaining notoriety as the disaster capital of the world - floods one year, cyclone the next, and drought the year after. ... The irony is that Chennai's vulnerability to floods and its water scarcity have common roots. Blinded by a hurry to grow, the city has paved over the very infrastructures that nurtured water.Between 1980 and 2010, heavy construction in the city meant its area under buildings increased from 47 sq km to 402 sq km. Meanwhile, areas under wetlands declined from 186 to 71.5 sq km.
Early agrarian settlements in Chennai respected the unpredictable weather with growth limited not by availability of land but of water.This agrarian logic valourised open spaces. Each village had vast tracts of land, including water bodies, grazing grounds and wood lots, demarcated as Poromboke or commons. Construction was outlawed in the commons. The three districts of Chennai, Thiruvallur and Kanchipuram alone had more than 6000 reservoirs (
erys) - some as old as 1,500 years.
So rather than transport water over long distances against gravity, early settlers had the technology and good sense to harvest water where it fell.But this faded with the advent of modern technology. ... As urban logic took root, built-up spaces began to be seen as more valuable than open earth. In fact, one could argue that Chennai's date with "zero water" was made in the 17th Century when it was incorporated as a city by Royal Charter. Born a colony of the British, the city rapidly became a coloniser of the countryside.
Reliance on a distant water source disconnected residents of the fast urbanising settlement from local water and landscapes. For the urban agenda, this was great as it freed up inner-city water bodies for real estate development.In the 1920s for instance, the ancient 70 acre Mylapore reservoir (tank) was filled up to create what is now a bustling residential and commercial area called T Nagar.
India received 24 percent less rainfall than the 50-year average in the week ending on June 26, data from the India Meteorological Department showed, with scant rains over central and western regions of the country. ... The spectre of a crisis this year comes after drought in some parts of India in 2018 destroyed crops, ravaged livestock and exhausted reservoirs, leaving some cities and industries with little water.... Land-use planning today is a far cry from the simple principles that prevailed in medieval Tamil Nadu.
Wetlands were off-limits for construction, and only low-density buildings were permitted on lands immediately upstream of tanks. The reason: These lands have to soak up the rainwater before letting it to run to the reservoir.
It is this sub-surface water that will flow to the lake as the levels go down with use and time. Unmindful of such common sense, the IT Corridor (a road which houses a large number of IT companies in the city) was built almost entirely on Chennai's precious Pallikaranai marshlands.
And the area immediately upstream of Chembarambakkam - the city's largest drinking water reservoir - has now been converted into an automotive special economic zone (SEZ).Other water bodies have been treated with similar disdain.
The Perungudi garbage dump spreads out through the middle of the Pallikaranai marshlands.The Manali marshlands were drained in the 1960s for Tamil Nadu's largest petrochemical refinery. Electricity for the city comes from a cluster of power plants built on the Ennore Creek, a tidal wetland that has been converted into a dump for coal-ash.The Pallavaram Big Tank, which is perhaps more than 1,000 years old, has over the last two decades been bisected by a high-speed road with the remainder
serving as a garbage dump for the locality.... Along the periphery of Chennai, and far into the hinterland, the land is dotted with communities whose water and livelihoods have been forcibly taken to feed the city. The water crises in these localities desiccated by the city never make it to the news.
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Villagers Accuse City of Seizing Water as Drought Parches 'India's Detroit'https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-water-chennai/villagers-accuse-city-of-seizing-water-as-drought-parches-indias-detroit-idUSKCN1TX1BFLocal tensions have been inflamed by the Tamil Nadu state government tapping wells normally used for agriculture and villagers’ daily needs.
... People living on the outskirts of Chennai, this southern Indian metropolis are blocking roads and laying siege to tanker lorries because they fear their water reserves are being sacrificed so city dwellers, businesses and luxury hotels don’t run out.“
Private tankers have fitted more than eight bore wells in our village and are indiscriminately extracting thousands of liters of water every day,” the Bangarampettai villagers wrote in a letter to a government official in the region a day after they stopped the tanker.
... We don’t have water in one of the two water tanks in the village now because the private tankers have been extracting water day and night.”------------------------------
India’s Deadly Drought: Villagers in Mokhada Battle Sleepless Nights, Snakes in Search of Waterhttps://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3016818/indias-deadly-drought-villagers-mokhada-battle... This region is facing a crushing water scarcity. Dominated mostly by tribal hamlets, Mokhada is underdeveloped – it has a literacy rate that is two-thirds lower than the national rate of 74 per cent; it sees hundreds of children dying each year due to poor nourishment and health care facilities.
... Mokhada’s drought carries a heavy and almost tragic sense of irony. It is not a dry region; five rivers originate here. The region generally sees over 2,400 millimetres of rainfall a year. But instead of providing for the locals, much of the water is diverted to Mumbai – which gets a major chunk of its water from here – along with other cities and industrial corridors.The scarcity can turn fatal. In April 2012, a woman died from the exertion of trying to fetch water. In addition, the hilly terrain in the region means the rainwater does not percolate but instead, slides off down the valley into the rivers.
Locals are left with the hard choice of staring at rivers flowing past, even as they struggle for each drop. ... The village’s only source of water, a common well, ran out of water in January this year.---------------------------
Drought-Hit Kenya Sees 2 Million People Needing Food Aid in Julyhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-27/drought-hit-kenya-sees-2-million-people-needing-food-aid-in-julyThe number of people facing a food crisis in Kenya could reach 2 million in July as the effects of a drought that hit food production and caused prices to soar continue to bite.
People needing food assistance will increase from 1.6 million in May, the National Drought Management Authority said in a report.
... “The food security situation has worsened,” the state’s drought-management agency said. “Crop across the country was affected by the delayed, poorly distributed and cumulatively below-average March-to-May long rains.”