Tamil Nadu - 1 Of India's Most Populous States - Facing Huge Water Stress, From Drought To Floods
Ed. - 50.2 million population, per Wikipedia.
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Tamil Nadu’s treacherous position along a dynamic coastline of warm, storm-fueling water, is exacting a huge economic and human toll. Erratic rainfall, and sharp growth in A sizable share of Chennai’s drinking water is transported from rural water wells and served from tanker trucks and plastic bottles.
A deep drought now grips the state, killing harvests and producing drinking water shortages. In Karnataka, a neighboring state, riots erupted in September over a court order to share water from the Cauvery River. A hospital in Coimbatore cancelled surgeries because the water reserves stored in big plastic tanks ran dry. The drought generates such stress on farmers in this state’s Cauvery Delta region, one of India’s great grain bowls, that 17 farmers have committed suicide in the last several months. Over 100 more have died of heart attacks. The region has never experienced such mortality from depleted harvests, a 59-year-old cardiologist told us.
November and December are especially tough months for Tamil Nadu. Two months ago, in December 2016, a cyclone blasted the northern reaches of the state, piling streets with downed trees and halting electricity and water distribution for a week in Chennai and nearby communities. A year before, heavy rains caused a flood that overflowed sewage treatment plants and drowned almost all of Chennai in fetid waters that killed 18 people and brought the city to a near standstill for a month. More than 400 others died from flooding across the state, according to the state’s chief minister. The offices and warehouses of EBay, Amazon, and other prominent tech companies housed in new buildings in Chennai’s IT corridor were shut and lost millions of dollars.
In December 2004, without warning, huge waves rose up from a Pacific tsunami and crashed against Tamil Nadu’s 1,072-kilometer coastline (669 mlies). The sea tore through fishing villages, demolishing homes and businesses. More than 6,000 people drowned.
Seven years later, in November 2011, a cyclone wrecked the $US 5 billion Nagarjuna oil refinery, which was under construction along the coast in Cuddalore District. Later, a big new coal-fired power plant just 14 kilometers (8 miles) away also got into trouble. A citizen lawsuit questioned the plant’s effects on coastal fisheries and water supplies, and the legitimacy of studies and permits used by the company building the $1.6 billion generating station. A decision in 2014 by the National Green Tribunal, a high court that decides environmental cases, halted construction of three new electrical generating turbines at the plant. Together, the refinery and power plant form one of the most costly clusters of stranded fossil fuel assets in the world.
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http://www.circleofblue.org/2017/world/choke-point-tamil-nadu/
