Ever Get That Sinking Feeling?

Miami and Miami Beach are getting used to rising tides and fierce rainstorms (not just hurricanes) that constantly flood coastal streets. Yes, the ocean is in fact rising. As ground water is pumped out for irrigation and human consumption, we are seeing an increase everywhere in sinkholes, many of which are big enough to swallow an entire car or even a house. We are also watching as very heavy buildings, not anchored in bedrock (which may be economically too deep to reach) slowly sinking down into the earth. Such is the case with the 58-story “Millennium Tower in San Francisco [which] is still sinking and leaning…the luxury building at 301 Mission Street… has sunk 17 inches and tilted 14 inches since it was completed in 2008.”  Business Insider, July 24^th. Nasty.

But when you combine all three of the above phenomena in, under and around a seaside city of 10 million residents – Jakarta (Indonesia’s capital city) – you just might get a megalopolis where the north side (aqua area in the BBC map to the right) has sunk a whopping 97 inches in ten years, and much of the city could easily slide entirely underwater by 2050. When Tokyo faced a similar problem many years ago, it immediately put severe limits on the pumping out of groundwater under the city. Jakarta is talking a similar game, but so far there is very little in the way of tangible efforts to implement the necessary water-removal restrictions. North Jakarta is sinking between half an inch to six inches a year!

The August 13^th BBC.com reports: “[Jakarta] sits on swampy land, the Java Sea lapping against it, and 13 rivers running through it. So it shouldn't be a surprise that flooding is frequent in Jakarta and, according to experts, it is getting worse. But it's not just about freak floods, this massive city is literally disappearing into the ground…

“In the district of Muara Baru, an entire office building lies abandoned. It once housed a fishing company but the first-floor veranda is the only functional part left… The submerged ground floor is full of stagnant floodwater. The land around it is higher so the water has nowhere to go. Buildings that are so deeply sunk are rarely abandoned like this, because most of the time the owners will try to fix, rebuild and find short-term remedies for the issue. But what they can't do is stop the soil sucking this part of the city down…

“North Jakarta has historically been a port city and even today it houses one of Indonesia's busiest sea ports, Tanjung Priok. Its strategic location where the Ciliwung river flows into the Java Sea was one of the reasons why Dutch colonists chose to make it their bustling hub in the 17th Century… Today 1.8 million people live in the municipality, a curious mixture of fading port businesses, poor coastal communities and a substantial population of wealthy Chinese Indonesians…

“But the impact on the small homes right by the sea is magnified. Residents who once had a sea view now see only a dull grey dyke, built and rebuilt in a valiant attempt to keep seawater out… ‘Every year the tide gets about 5cm higher [about 2 inches],’ Mahardi, a fisherman, said.

“None of this has deterred the property developers. More and more luxury apartments dot the North Jakarta skyline regardless of the risks. The head of the advisory council for Indonesia's Association of Housing Development, Eddy Ganefo, says he has urged the government to halt further development here [since the weight of these buildings just adds to the problem]. But, he says, ‘so long as we can sell apartments, development will continue.’…

“The rest of Jakarta is also sinking, albeit at a slower rate. In West Jakarta, the ground is sinking by as much as 15cm annually [6 inches], by 10cm [4 inches] annually in the east, 2cm [0.8 inches] in Central Jakarta and just 1cm in South Jakarta.

“Coastal cities across the world are affected because of rising sea levels caused by climate change. Increased sea levels occur because of thermal expansion - the water expanding because of extra heat - and the melting of polar ice. The speed at which Jakarta is sinking is alarming experts…

“It may seem surprising but there are few complaints from Jakartans because for residents here the subsidence is just one among a myriad of infrastructure challenges they have to deal with daily.

“And that is part of the story of why this is happening… The dramatic rate at which Jakarta is sinking is partly down to the excessive extraction of groundwater for use as drinking water, for bathing and other everyday purposes by city dwellers. Piped water isn't reliable or available in most areas so people have no choice but to resort to pumping water from the aquifers deep underground.

“But when groundwater is pumped out, the land above it sinks as if it is sitting on a deflating balloon - and this leads to land subsidence…The situation is exacerbated by lax regulation allowing just about anyone, from individual homeowners to massive shopping mall operators, to carry out their own groundwater extractions.

“‘Everyone has a right, from residents to industries, to use groundwater so long as this is regulated,’ says Heri Andreas. The problem is that they take more than what is allowed… People say they have no choice when the authorities are unable to meet their water needs and experts confirm that water management authorities can only meet 40% of Jakarta's demand for water…

“[Add a sea wall demand the locals, but] three Dutch non-profit groups released a report in 2017 which cast doubt on whether the sea wall and artificial islands could solve Jakarta's subsidence problem.

“Jan Jaap Brinkman, a hydrologist with the Dutch water research institute Deltares, argues it can only ever be an interim measure. He says it will only buy Jakarta an extra 20-30 years to stop the long-term subsidence.

“‘There is only one solution and everybody knows the solution,’ he says… That would be to halt all groundwater extraction and solely rely on other sources of water, such as rain or river water or piped water from man-made reservoirs. He says Jakarta must do this by 2050 to avoid major subsidence.” While it may be fascinating to watch, it is equally sad. Between global climate change and too many people sucking down too many resources, the earth is showing us her limits. For those unfortunate enough to be on the edge of the overlap of Malthusian population growth and global warming, the consequences become very personal… and even more severe.

I’m Peter Dekom, and frankly, scientific facts don’t really care whether you believe them or not; they just are and will do what the laws of physics programmed them to do.