June 30, 2016
By Marnie O'Neill
It's one of the world's (click here) most important, vibrant cities and home to 20 million people, but Beijing is literally collapsing under the weight of its own economic success.
Research has revealed that parts of the city are sinking at an alarming rate - by as much as 11cm (about 4 and 1/3 inches) per year - because of the over consumption of groundwater.
The findings, published this month in the journal Remote Sensing, reveal the rate of sinking threatens "the safety of the public and urban infrastructure".
Uneven sinking prove catastrophic for the city's train network, buildings and other major structures, the study found....
Land of any kind tolerates weight placed on it by human beings. There are cities in the world that are very heavy and cause the escalation of sinking. New Orleans is another, but, the oil drilling and extraction is the prime reason it sinks.
There are a lot of people in Beijing that have consumer demands such as tall and heavy buildings.
This characteristic of cities around the world is no different than the denial of the climate crisis; people take Earth for granted. Governments never apply physics to the plan for their country.
There are reports about the central valley in California discovering a new water supply. It isn't new. It is a deep aquifer that has ocean water impingement. Most of the time aquifers with ocean water impingement are not valued as a water source. There amounts of salt in it. High intake of salt in a person's diet is dangerous. Salt in large amounts can change the osmotic BALANCE of the body.
California's central valley will sink if the aquifer is used for a water source. ALSO, as the fresh water is used more and more ocean water will enter it. The salt content will increase and a water treatment plant will be obsolete and a desalination plant will have to take it's place.
When aquifers are tapped as a city's water source there will be sinking of the land as the hydraulic pressure against the land FLOTATION decreases.
So.
In the case of Beijing there are many factors including drinking water, more people, more buildings AND a coastal plain with a history of flooding during sea level rise.
