Canals Filled, Wetlands Drained & Built, Groundwater Mined; IOW, Kolkata's Natural Defenses Are Gone

[hatrack]

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Kolkata had natural defenses: the mighty Ganges to the west, wetlands to the east, all emptying into the mangrove-rich delta region known as the Sundarbans and out to the Bay of Bengal. The city’s lakes and creeks could swallow the rains. The soft clay soil, used by the city’s sculptors to create figures of revered Hindu gods, could hold groundwater.

Today, many lakes and canals are filled with muck or built over altogether. An area of low-lying fields that once absorbed the runoff is now a suburb of high-rises known as New Kolkata. The rapid extraction of groundwater is causing the landscape to sink. “We’re actually kind of destroying all these natural subsidies,” Mr. Basu said.

And the Sundarbans? The people of the Sundarbans are pouring into Kolkata. The water of the Bay of Bengal is rising faster than the global average. Their paddy fields turned salty, they told me, and their houses fell down. So they packed up and moved to Kolkata, the closest big city, joining the ranks of the most vulnerable: the city’s poor.

Now, they live in houses made of bamboo and tin, in neighborhoods where the drains back up in the monsoon and you have to hitch up your sari to wade through the filthy, stinking floodwaters.

EDIT

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/climate/the-city-of-my-birth-in-india-is-becoming-a-climate-casualty-it-didnt-have-to-be.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

[mountain grammy]

1. Sounds like Florida.