To Save Sinking Cities, Just Add Water
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- Опубликовано: 28 ноя 2023
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It's more than climate change putting coastal cities at risk of catastrophic flooding. Subsidence, or sinking, affects cities as they pump out groundwater to use. The solution might be as simple as putting it back.
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Sources:
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link.springer.com/article/10....
www.washingtonpost.com/climat...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...
www.usgs.gov/special-topics/w...
www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/15/6/1094
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundw...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer...
www.unesco.org/en/articles/ma...
www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP/ins...
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
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www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-4...
www.theguardian.com/cities/20...
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Images:
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www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/15/6/1094
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
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Why do you guys report misinformation so much. Just look at my comments.
@@williamreffett5862 So are you a conspiracy theorist or just an idiot who thinks he's smart?
I remember learning about how when oil was discovered in Long Beach California, so much oil was being pumped out that they were sinking. If I remember correctly they ended up pumping in sea water to fix it.
The salt content is not good if you intend ever to use the water in that aquifer for anything else.
So they destroyed it twice.
They've done that all over the US.... I know Texas has old oil chambers lined w/ a liquid latex stuff to seal it then pumped full of fresh water to store it "Just in case".
@@xpndblhero5170Texas oilfield worker here and I would like to see a source for that information please.
The Netherlands have increase in earthquakes from natural gas extraction
In coastal places there is also the danger of the ground absorbing sea water if you take too much water out of it. That’s what happened to some villages in my country some time ago when there weren't any regulations and every farmer would pump water from the earth.
In layman terms, fine sediment can be broadly defined as “clay”. It’s a bit easier to understand how the ground is sinking fastest in cities built on top of clay when you think about how clay pottery shrink & crack when it dries out.
Thank you. That really helps to understand.
It's because small underground catchments collapse, rather than It's clay. With both clay and sand water moves in the spaces in between. Water moves thru sandy soil quickly because of higher porosity, so it can *RECHARGE* faster.
Quite large vessels can be made of clay without cracking, though it does depend on thickness...
I recently watched a video on Angkor Wat, and it was said that water in the large, surrounding moat, is what keeps the enormous temple structure from sinking into the sandy soil.
As someone from Perth, I always surprised when Perth gets any international attention 😂 and while I was aware some of our coastal areas were subsiding, I didn't know the Perth Basin had been recharged enough to cause uplift again! I went looking and found the paper. Very interesting thank you SciShow!
Every time I think of Perth I think of that guy on the other side, Sydney I think? That made a big sign on his roof that said "Welcome to Perth" and made a bunch of people figuratively sh!t their pants 😂😂😂
Adelaide too
I only know about Perth because I was curious why the other side of Australia was so much more popular. 😅 That's when I looked for civilization on the west coast and there it was.
Still don't understand why the west coast of AUS is overlooked. Perth supposedly has a golden climate so it should be an excellent vacation spot.
@@Awesomeficationify Fiji has a better vacation climate - and it's less distance from Sydney than Perth is! Indonesia/Bali, New Zealand etc etc are all closer than Perth too, that's why Perth gets overlooked. Total tourist stuff on the west coast might be high, but the distance between them is extreme too
@@RainbowJesusChavez OMG yes hahaha I vaguely remember seeing that on the news haha 🤣
We should take the city and push it somewhere else
Indonesia is moving its capital to a different city next year.
It's like they've decided Jakarta is a write-off.
After viewing this YT video and reading comments from around the world, I naturally wondered what the situation was in my country (Canada).
I should have guessed, but it turns out the vast majority of our land mass is undergoing uplift rather than subsidence - due mostly to post-glacial isostatic rebound (still going strong 12000 years after the last glaciers disappeared over all but our most mountainous areas).
The only places seeing subsidence are in a few Atlantic coastal areas (vulnerable to ocean rise as well) and our (much higher-elevation) parts of the Great Plains contiguous with the US (which is pretty much ground zero for massive "water mining" of aquifers in North America).
Even coastal Vancouver and the lower Fraser Valley in British Columbia look to be "enjoying" the dubious benefits of uplift that's mostly affecting Vancouver Island (across the narrow Salish Sea), storing up ever more energy for the inevitable next "Big One" Cascadia subduction event... (For the people of that region, gradual subsidence would almost certainly be MUCH preferable to what awaits them...)
And soon, Montreal winters will be as mild as Virginia. Canada has all the luck.
I need to ask, then, where do those uplifting cities get their drinking water? From rivers?
@@trishapellis In general, yes: Canada is almost everywhere a lot "wetter" than comparable points of longitude in the US and the runoff means we are rarely seriously short of water. (It's also why we're fairly well-endowed with hydroelectric power potential and why our agriculture is a lot less dependent on irrigation than in the US.)
We also have rather a lot of pristine lakes lying over bedrock where the glaciers once flowed. In many cases, they're close enough to major urban centres that lake aqueducts from the north or east can be used even where the land is relatively flat (on the eastern Prairies, for example) and rivers tend to be slow-moving, muddy, sinuous things.
Yep, subsidence and water level rising in the East Coast is bad. Sea levels are projected to rise 1-2ish metres in the next 80 years. So ooof. My family is from Halifax and the waterfront is a really big part of life in the city. I am not sure how things are gonna change with the rising sea levels but its gonna be so weird. And like probably really bad.
I remember watching a video about why Jakarta is sinking and apparently during colonisation times the infrastructure wasn't built properly and that the water being pumped out can't get back in the soil due to all the asphalt and concrete in the way
One of the best ways to counter subsidence is through bioswales. Cities are covered in impermeable surfaces. That disallows natural recharge.
Bioswales are depressed planting areas that use healthy soil processes to sequester water into soil. It assists regreening, is lots cheaper than tearing up streets to enlarge drainage, or put in new drainage pipes, adds attractive greenery, counteracts ground subsidence, reduces pollution, reduces grid strain, etc.
Brad Lancaster wrote a pair of great books called Rainwater Harvesting in Drylands and Beyond. He discusses bioswales and other ways to preserve water instead of letting it evaporate directly into the air, or run off the the sea. Storing water in soil using natural processes is the best way to store freshwater,
This was one of the best explanation of subsidence i've ever heard. You people rock!
City: Help I'm drowning!!!
Scientist: What do you need?
City: More water
Perth, Western Australia is built on wetlands. It has more lakes that all the capital cities of Australia combined. That is why it is critical that aquifers are managed correctly and sustainably.
Previously, the city's water came from dams. However, rainfall reduced significantly due to widespread clearing of the south-west region of the state over many decades. The city then relied on tapping aquifers for some of its supply, until the many lakes which are open expressions of the aquifers, began to dry up.
Perth has since built two desalination plants (with a third on the way) to provide a secure water supply. Excess water produced by the desalination plants in winter is stored in some of the historic dams. The aquifers are recharged by recycled sewerage water (because people didn't like the idea of drinking it - even though its perfectly safe).
In addition to the above, a perennial stream/drain network that once flowed exclusively into the ocean at Floreat Beach after it was diverted there in the 1930's, has been partially diverted to top up a lake instead. Domestic bore use has also been reduced from 3 days per week to 2 (matching the scheme water restrictions). Perth is pretty forward thinking when it comes to managing water... even though it could be so much better, Perth is very much ahead of other major cities as water is not plentiful here so it is respected more.
Thank you 😊
We need to be doing water retention flooding measures not just modifying rivers and artificially injecting water
True, floodplains are so important, and many of them are under threat, especially with that recent Supreme Court ruling.
@@ComradeCatpurrnicus it's so frustrating to see humanity fail to address problems like this properly
Yupppppp
@@ConstantChaos1 true facts I consider everyday
See the Dutch solution
A notable example is the overpumping of the aquifers in Israel before desalination plants became available. The areas bordering the dead sea have lost much of the water and began collapsing, causing the formation of gullies. They are still increasing in number and are exposed without warning, causing many hazards and often casualties. I don't know how much desalination will mitigate the need for pumping more water, but climatic change is causing less annual precipitations and there are many factors at play.
A clarification: the states reliant on the Colorado River were told that they had to create a plan to reduce demand on the river by a certain amount. They were told that if they couldn't figure it out amongst themselves before the deadline, the federal government would be implementing their own reduction plan. A lot of people probably want to call it overreach, but I'm willing to bet a lot of those people will be in a tight spot if the river drops too low to generate hydroelectric power.
Every time i hear about water use it always seems like we're in for a lot of desalination plants and water use reduction measures
Fracking hell!
San Joaquin resident here. I didn’t know why the patio’s concrete kept cracking even after fixing it. Now I do.
Superbly explained and informative, thanks a bunch!
INSAR - the cool new scientific abbreviation I did not know I needed!
Final satellite image was of San Diego bay. There has been some subsidence in the area, specifically in Chula Vista (as shown in that image.) See Brandt et. al. in The Proceedings of the IAHS. However, like all coastal areas, the bay area of San Diego is doomed by sea level rise.
CDMX should be there; it sinks like 50cm a year, plus earthquakes and volcanoes
It's one thing to point to individual consumers for using groundwater. What about the kinds of companies (like big aggro, Nestle etc) who keep extracting even more groundwater?
We need to build more reservoirs to replenish ground water. And build more desalination to stop using ground water.
What do you do with the brine?
seriously good point
only increasing the salinity of the ocean or now we have barrels of brine just waiting around for us to "find something to do with them"
One thing that bothers me is that the brine is actually filled with valuable metals, it's just too much work to process. Nothing really stops us from just collecting a massive volume a brine and then processing it all once it has built up enough.@@yt.personal.identification
Maybe it would be worthwhile to use water sources further from city. You know from source which is less likely to get contaminated and cannot mess up foundations of city
Woah.
I would have thought isostatic rebound would have had been the top cause... or at least get a mention.
So the Puget Sound is, for lack of better term, hosed?
What about ground water replenishment using traditional methods? Would that help?
does it have to be fresh water they pump back in? if they pumped in sea water, could they let the ground filter out the salt, with enough space between pumps?
Wild seeing my exact corner of the world pop up at 6:13 haha. I was not expecting to see Coronado, CA in a scishow video!
Protect those mangroves baby free coastal real estate
QUESTION: When I go to the beach, and I look out at the horizon on the sea, I swear the horizon looks (for lack of better terms) bumpy/squiggly/zig-zaggy. Why is that?
"I'm gonna go get the papers, get the papers."
most of what we humans do in this planet are irrersivible and destructive we never learned from our past
Maybe this is the wrong place to be asking this, but could pumping sea water into these regions, at least for a period of time, be a possible route for desalination? Even if the process would take a number of years, it could be wise to bank water like this for future use. (Not that our capitalist system would find that worthwhile for profits this quarter.. 🤦🏼♀️)
Do you think future time travelers did not account for This while travelling to California, so most likely they ended up below ground 😬
But where should we take a water then? Rivers, seas, oceans, rainwater?
reducing use & recycling it after use are the best options
Put that thing back where it came from or so help me!
Water subsidence is only a small part of the problem. Even if no groundwater was extracted, it would still sink, because flood control equipment prevents the deposition of new silt. The dirt is constantly compacting from the sheer weight of the dirt. This is why NOLA's 9th ward is below sea level. The army corps of engineers rerouted the mississippi river causing new silt to stop being deposited...
Silt also just doesnt deposit under a building, it would deposit around the building and on the road
@@lomiificationwhich must be understood and expected when building there.
Haven't watch yet. is this sinking of the land due to shrinkage by using water reservoirs close underneath the cities like that one pic of cali from the 1970 where it shows the sunkeness of the land over decades ?
Side note: Indonesia has planned to build a new capital city called "Nusantara" due to the sinking Jakarta problem
Johads you need lots of johads and water extraction buildings. Groundwater will go fill up on its own. You dont even need to have any tech to do those
Does this guy do the voice of Mr. Slave?
Mexico City should've come up, which is sinking at a rate of 50 centimeters/20 inches a year! That's MUCH more then any city in the video. It's also from the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan being sieged, as it was built in the middle of what was, at the time, a large lake basin, both on a natural island and then expanded with a grid of artificial islands over time, it was basically Venice, but twice the size at the time and with a dash of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon mixed in. When the city was sieged, it's aqueducts, canals, and other water management infrastructure was destroyed. The Spanish never or were unable to rebuild it, so Mexico City kept flooding as it was built over the ruins. Eventually the lakes were drained, today leaving only some canals and garden/farm island plots (Chinampas) around Xochimilco (which at the time was a seperate city from Tenochtitlan but today is part of Mexico City's sprawl, which fills what's now former lakebed), and the drained aquafier and loose lakebed sediment is sinking fast.
so what are you doing to fix it? The cities that "came up" are the cities that are actively addressing the problem & showing it can be reversed, is your city doing that? Doesn't sound like it from what you wrote, hence why it was not relevent for this video
And if we keep adding a BIGGER icecube every year...
“Thus solving the problem forever. Forever!!”
Ohh sinking new york is really shocking
Why not pump coffee into the ground?
*side eyes Nestle*
immediate guess prior to watching the video is to pump on water under the city to add volume sort of like how regions can sink if you remove all the groundwater from them, think that’s happening to the avocado state in the US where they keep pulling out the ground water and using it to grow avocados that take their water content out of the state
I love that it’s never overtly said, but science consistently shows how vital social programs are. A high tide raises all ships…or aquifers I guess.
764000000000 kg = 764 teragrams, for those who actually understand how metric works.
So the answer unfortunately is no ☹️. ..
What happens if you put desalinated sea water through a natural aquifer? Instead of pumping it?
I'm curious if the high surface area of the aquifer itself can act like a form of filter with the salt depositing slowly at the source of injection and become desalinated further from that point. However one issue with this is (assuming it would work at all) is that the aquifer would become saturated with salts and cease being a useful form of storage. Just a thought.
So a billion kilograms… a trillion grams? 😉😜🙂
How many grams is a candygram?
We've extracted enough groundwater in our recent history to change the way the planet rotates. We aren't going to be able to put it all back. We probably can't put any of it back.
The reservoirs are nothing to the effects of the Suns Magnetic field we are suspended in.
For years now in Western Australia - ah I'm typing and you mention lol, we're filling our Aquafers but also we recycle sewage water and desalinate ocean water. Welcome to one of the driest cities being affected by climate change way faster.
while on the east coast, people were terrified of the idea of recycling waste water, hence why we ended up with a desal plant in Sydney, instead of just recycling wastewater that we pump 5kms out to sea to dispose of it, it's insane! I didn't realise you guys recycled your wastewater, nice to hear there's some sanity over there
At some point, the human race will simply need to accept that we can't just live anywhere. Coastal cities create an unsustainable need for fresh water that cannot be kept up with.
Hey man, you look great today on this video. Keep doin what youre doin.
Refilling aquifers would be a perfect use for treated wastewater.
Unless you add new material on top, you cannot jack the ground back up with the like of aquifer recharge once subsidence occurs.
missing "coastal" from the title. Mexico City is far from a coast but has sunken many meters as the ground compresses, and yes water is extracted as well although most of the city gets its water from a reservoir.
Why are you switching between millimeters and centimeters? Your aren't even constant about the same event. You used 28cm in the beginning then 280mm later on. Use constant units! We shouldn't have to convert and keep track so we can understand
at least it's just adding or subtracting a zero, which makes it MUCH easier than if it was switching between inches & feet or other imperial measurements.
You do have a point though, they should keep it consistent
There is *_no_* coffee that is suited to my taste.
Ah yes, aquifers. A great source of water and !!FUN!!
As in, Dwarf Fortress FUN?
@@thestic6349 (yes)
Ever been to Berlin? I was there for 4 days in 2022. There were many things to see, remember and consider but I was struck by the ubiquitous 30 pipes that came out of the ground, crossed a street or a block and went back underground. they were colorful and might have been color coded. I was informed the Berlin was built on a marsh and to prevent subsidence, flooding and building collapses, the City needed to adjust subsurface water tables constantly. Something they never taught me in a american High school
I don't know. My instincts tell me, if an aquifer has settled due to water removal, I'd better be super cautious about fumbling with it again. Sounds like sinkholes waiting to open up, at least in my ears.
and my instincts tell me it's best not to drain it in the first place
I knew about subsidence as a result of groundwater pumping, but I never thought about its' effects on coastal cities along with sea level rise. Subsidence effects 5 times greater than sea level rise is a mind blower. Over pumping groundwater can permanently damage aquifers as the pore spaces are compressed.
This man really got the bronze tan of a greek titan and he is not even gonna talk about how he got it?
Wait a minute! the weight of the dirt removed for the foundation sand basements is usually way more than the weight of the building.
Not for things taller than a couple of stories. Also, the process of building my compress the soil underneath more than before buildings. IMO
Dollar store civil engineer
@@Grauenwolf I'm pretty sure your house is not typical of the skyscrappers found in NY!
Jakarta should be an example water privatisation as pushed by IMF and World Bank in late 1990s and 2000s just before and after AFC, supposedly so they build water pipes did not work. These were foreign companies too that only care for profits, Thames Water and Lyonnaise. As shown still only 40% Jakartan are served with water pipes. Private companies don't care the land is sinking.
I'm really shocked by the sinking in that first photo - and that no-one has thought that it's a serious problem & they need to stop draining so much water out of their aquifers! That's insane!
Desalinization has been a thing for years and years; when are we going to fund more research into making it feasible to use more ocean water for communities??
recycling wastewater is WAY more practical, cheaper & easier!
Perth, Western Australia, (population 2.1million) which is mentioned in the video for groundwater recharge, has two desalination plants and a third being built. We are lucky to be a very wealthy city in a very wealthy state, so we can afford it. Desalination is energy intensive, so we also have Emu Downs Wind Farm providing the energy.
@@aussie405 and you have waste water recycling too don't you? Not just desal (but are also basically sandy desert throughout, so miss out on a LOT of what normally goes into waste water, in the form of storm water run off, as it just sinks into the sand there in a way it doesn't in most of the world
@@mehere8038 I believe that what is used in the groundwater recharge is waste water that has been treated to a level that it is cleaner than required for drinking water. We still have limits on how often gardens can be watered (twice per week).
Edited to add: what sinks into the sandy ground eventually should make back into the aquifers.
@@aussie405 good point re aquifers & rainwater runoff :)
I just thought it was worth pointing out, after me earlier having said people should recycle wastewater, instead of using desal, that you were doing that as well, not just jumping to desal instead, even though you have less wastewater to work with than the vast majority of cities do.
I'm in Sydney & thought it was ridiculous that we built a desal instead of investing in wastewater treatment. We clean our waste, then pump it 5kms off shore & now we suck in salt water to remove the salt & waste from it, instead of just treating & reusing the wastewater before adding salt to it in the ocean? Crazy imo! That said, after the "day zero" stuff in S. Africa with their water completely running out & that being the first time we started to turn on the desal here, due to water levels dropping here from the same weather phenomenon that was impacting S. Africa, I do kinda feel like it's not a bad idea to have it there as an insurance policy. Pretty sure it never fully turned on, was a big process to turn it on apparently, hiring staff & months of pre-turn on stuff & I don't think it reached actual turn on before the drought broke & it went back into mothballs, same as it had been for a decade before that. We have a nuclear reactor at the same site, used for research & making medical products mostly, but it was upgraded to be able to power the desal too, cause like you say, they use a LOT of power, so I still think we should be developing recycling of our waste, rather than relying on existing dams & desal as our population increases well beyond the level the dams were built to service
hi
There are whole cities of antiquity that are now scuba diving attractions because the ground they were built on sank into the sea. Most of the time that was because they were built on soft ground that collapsed over time, but regardless, we are not as different from our ancestors as we think. That will be our fate at this rate, which will cause huge economic strain as people are displaced from sinking cities that slowly become uninhabitable. It's cheaper to address this now, so I am glad to see that some are taking measures to at least mitigate it-but reversing it altogether feels really unlikely without some radical changes that also honestly feel really unlikely.
Hi, I live in a suburb of Brisbane, Australia, we receive 1.3 metres of rainfall annually, no significant variation from year to year, the majority of which goes into stormwater drainage, a problem or a solution to many water issues?
Ross
U can add water after u pump out whatever it is. Once the land already sink, soil eroded, sink holes appear adding water is useless or make it worst.
What is the effect of water loss from city infrastructure? That’s a big problem here and there’s marine clay pretty much everywhere.
Quick, someone tell the Venetians
Hopefully they already know, since Venice has sunk around nine inches in the last century.
Fight fire with fire ayy? I like it!
when i was little my home town used a small local lake, but water levels got too low, and goose poop levels got too high, so they switched us to lake ontario water
Would be interesting to see if there's a benefit of trying to explore pumped hydro geothermal energy to both add water back into the subsurface as well as extract some heat energy.
*laughs in iowa state*
Also note the role of urban impervious cover (buildings, roads, parking lots) and gray stormwater collection (gutters and concrete pipes) - this prevents a natural amount of rain from seeping into the plants, soils, and sediments beneath us, to ultimately contribute to the aquifers.
Also, instead of micro-wells at people’s homes, couldn’t Jakarta incentivize micro rainwater collection, instead of building a huge expensive and disruptive centralized water pipe distribution system from a reservoir or central pump? Or is the rain not clean or plentiful enough in Jakarta?
You should do a video about the Great Salt Lake drying up. Just so I, as a resident of Magna, know how doomed I am.
Coffee that donates all its profit to global health initiatives >>>>> other coffee, so I'll be sticking with Awesome Coffee!
new york sinking is no surprise. besides the massive weight of the buildings there are massive amounts of tunnels for the subway and sewer,steam and utility systems and many so old they are not used anymore. maybe NY should consider filling in the unused stuff
My beach front property is 25m above sea so I think I’m fine lol
U can add water after u pump out whatever it is. Once the land already sink, soil eroded, sink holes appear adding water is useless or make it worst. Sinking cities doesnt happen overnight so u cant just add water when its already sinking it will become shallow lake lol😊
bro your comment got stolen
You fight fire with fire you fight water with water that tracks
The Scandinavian peninsula is about the only landmass rising. It was compressed during a late ice age and is still decompressing. Oh, and by late ice age, in the south of Europe, the Greek were building civilization.
Not quite. Almost the entire land mass of Canada is undergoing the exact same isostatic rebound in the wake of the disappearance of our (much bigger and presumably thicker and heavier) ice sheets 12000 years ago.
I would imagine there are large parts of Russia for which this is likely true as well...
As for other Arctic regions, Greenland - with its remaining ice sheet - is a special case since isostatic rebound there is undoubtedly overwhelmed many times over by accelerating glacial melt.
As for the US, Alaska too is seeing lots of uplift (a good deal of it due to tectonic factors in its very extensive coastal subduction zone) as are its Pacific Northwestern states (for the same reason).
@@PeloquinDavid What's unique with Scandinavia is that the ice age was much later. There are cities on areas that used to be completely under water during the age of the vikings.
Can’t believe you excepted a sponsorship from a competitor to the Awesome Coffee Club. What will Hank think?
I can't believe they didn't mention phoenix it's the fastest sinking city in the USA
they listed more than enough US facts don't you think! Nice to see some other countries did get a rare mention in this video at least.
Tell me, what's the fastest sinking city on the North American continent? It's certainly not Phoenix, is it! Wouldn't that city be more relevant to mention?
I had to check the calendar before watching this vid, to make sure this isn't April.
Where does the water to refill the aquifers come from?
For example, the Ogallala Aquifer on the plains east of the Rockies is nowhere near any source. The major aquifers are already being drained at an unsustainable rate, especially in semi-arid, arid, and desert areas.
Would the pollutants in agricultural runoff be an option?
Will salt water be an option? Will that contaminate the water already in the aquifer?
While you have the genie's attention, can you wish for one more wish? In many places, rivers and streams have become little more than very wet sewers.
For coastal areas industrial scale desalination would be an option.
More rain is the obvious solution, you just need to add water.
I do not deny the changing climate, but now I got curious if some of the rising sea levels could be caused by us pumping water from the ground and it in the end reaching the ocean. No matter if that could be the case or not, we definitely need to take care of this planet better
Instead of pumping fresh water in, use saltwater. Not terribly environmentally friendly but comes with the added benefit that it stops the next politician from reversing the pump.
I misread the title and so I thought it said stinking cities