
Life in a City Without Water: Anxious, Exhausting and Sweaty - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/world/asia/india-water-crisis.html
======
dang
Earlier threads about this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20345066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20345066)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20322186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20322186)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20254416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20254416)

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rayraegah
My parents are both residents in Chennai and visited me in Tokyo last month. I
overheard phone conversations and their complaints on state of the crisis. The
water crisis gets deeper and more sinister.

I remember plumbing being done years ago around the house to harvest
rainwater, to store it in underground tanks and excess drained into the well.
Nearly every household was forced to do this by the government. Few households
built a sump and others bought plastic water storage tanks (it is the cheaper
option) to store water. These are being re-purposed to store water delivered
by water tankers. (a family 4 approximately uses upto 4000 L of water every
month, in Chennai, around my parents neighbourhood)

With the water crisis now, these plastic storage devices are under attack.
Near my parent's neighbourhood a few households had the water drained from the
tanks and the tanks themselves stolen or sabotage to prevent further storage.
Sumps are not risk free either, as malicious actors drop pipes into them and
use a pump to drain the water out. (some pollute the sump after draining it
and later charge to clean them up as innocent service providers)

Furthermore, water bodies around the greater metro have dried up. These so
called "water tankers" are siphoning water from bodies which were designated
unsafe for drinking, from agricultural wells, and through other illegal means.
The water being delivered is neither certified for quality or acceptable for
drinking. Some neighbourhoods that were recipient of such water have seen a
rise in the number of sick children.

Edit:

\----

The well in our house was 8ft deep, there are also two borewells one at 400 ft
and the other at 1000 ft deep. All three of the waterholes are now dry.
There's literally no underground water left in certain areas in Chennai. It
also costs several thousand dollars to drill a new one now.

There is hope yet. People have banded together to clean up nearby water
bodies, like the Chitlapakkam Rising [0] and Velachery Rising [1] NGOs who
have raised funds and put their children and old to work on cleaning nearby
lakes removing garbage and making the lake bed deeper. They hope to have the
monsoon rain fill them this year and restore the underground water supply.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt29MvgX01I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt29MvgX01I)

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozhwWzuPNAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozhwWzuPNAw)

~~~
pkaye
I think its great that the people are getting involved in the cleanup but I
really feel the government should pitch in and bring some heavy equipment to
speed up the cleanup.

------
coldtea
Now imagine a climate change future where this happens all more often -- also
the resulting wars between neighborhood states with more/less recourses.

This is a more likely future than "colonies on Mars", fully autonomous self
driving cars, and personal robot assistants...

~~~
Joe-Z
Who says we can‘t have both? Of course the latter will only be accessible to a
wealthy elite still glad they managed to escape the woes of socialism.

~~~
coldtea
> _Who says we can‘t have both?_

Reality. Once constant recession, social unrest, famines, resource struggles,
and so on become a permanent fixture, consensus to spend money on such things
becomes even lower (and there's no market to sustain a "wealthy elite" either,
the elite declines too, like it did in Rome's fall).

------
Arbalest
Reading articles like this makes me want to check our local reservoirs more.
We build a desal plant to feed about 10% (I think?) of our city's consumption
starting in about 2007, when we had some pretty major drought. I believe it is
only now that we see a drought severe enough again to start appreciating it,
but no one thinks about it anymore. Shortly after it was built, about 5 years
ago, it was derided as a great big waste of money. But I think it has been our
hidden reservoir savior. It has been running continuously since in maintenance
mode, but even just a little bit may be enough to make our reservoirs seem
like they're enough on their own, as that small amount of water no longer
needs to come from them.

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vondur
I can't imagine having to deal with this sort of issue on a daily basis nearly
all the time. I have a travel trailer and sometimes camp without hookups,
which forces you to be very careful with your fresh water supply. Of course, I
can simply move somewhere and get more water, these people don't have that
luxury.

~~~
walrus01
The "water tanker mafia" in Karachi is another example, in many areas with
large population where there simply is no municipal water supply, and wells
are literally impossible to extract water from.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/09/10/6455253...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/09/10/645525392/for-
karachis-water-mafia-stolen-h20-is-a-lucrative-business)

[https://nation.com.pk/08-Oct-2018/water-tanker-mafia-
looting...](https://nation.com.pk/08-Oct-2018/water-tanker-mafia-looting-
karachiites)

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-
people...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-
people/tanker-mafia-using-illegal-hydrants-sell-drinking-water-black/)

[https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/292872-water-mafia-
sells-40...](https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/292872-water-mafia-sells-40pc-
of-city-s-water-through-tankers)

------
walrus01
I think the biggest immediate change we will see from climate change and
"climate emergencies" is massive migration of people. If sea level rise
affects a significant portion of Bangladesh, or Rajasthan remains at 50C
weather for long periods of time, millions of people will become climate
refugees.

[https://www.unhcr.org/climate-change-and-
disasters.html](https://www.unhcr.org/climate-change-and-disasters.html)

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/02/climate-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/02/climate-
change-will-create-worlds-biggest-refugee-crisis)

~~~
stefan_
This current crisis is 90% mismanagement and ineptitude, 10% climate change
and that's probably being very generous.

~~~
hourislate
I can't find it but someone from one of the zones in India that is suffering
from severe water shortages said just this (what you mentioned).

They said everything from filling in lakes to leaking water pipes and a
corrupt local government are more to blame than climate change.

What's interesting is that even private enterprise can't fix this problem
since there is probably a water cartel already in place to profit from the
situation with the local government officials in on the take.

Why hasn't the local population held their government responsible or is this
not possible?

~~~
radicaldreamer
India is a super corrupt place where faith in government services is low.
There's also a kind of apathy involved where long term corruption has narrowed
people's horizons about what government can achieve.

------
starpilot
With people collecting water from AC's, seems like moisture farming could be a
viable business if power is cheap enough.

[https://theconversation.com/new-technology-brings-star-
wars-...](https://theconversation.com/new-technology-brings-star-wars-style-
desert-moisture-farming-a-step-closer-76183)

------
paulific
I think I'm going to go back and finish Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife. It
feels less like dystopian science fiction and more like realistic observation
than ever at this point.

