People in East Devon are worried that sand mining and removing groundwater storage on a hill above Ottery St Mary – a town with a history of flooding – will permanently increase the flood risk downstream from four watercourses. They are right to be worried – knowing that Aggregate Industries’ infiltration plans can’t work – when groundwater is this close to the surface, knowing that new plans will not be requested before determination, knowing that this could be heading for an almighty stitch-up.
However, these concerns amount to nothing when compared to the agony suffered in Kerala, India, where more than 1 million people have fled to relief camps, with more than 410 dead and an estimated $3bn in rebuilding costs.
The flooding rightly received attention from the world's media – it was the worst monsoon the area had seen in nearly 100 years. What was less widely reported was the rainfall was less intense than 1924 but the damage as great. Why so? Experts are convinced that uncontrolled sand mining is to blame:
Sand regulates a river’s flow, floodplains store water, recharge ground water, filter pollutants, allows aquatic life to thrive. When sand is taken out, water tables sink, rivers dry up, change course, banks collapse, floodplains get pitted with ponds, silt chokes rivers, vegetation and habitats get destroyed, dust pollution kicks in.
Kerala’s once-in-a-lifetime deluge brought with it rainfall of 2,378 mm over 88 days, four times more than normal — but 30 per cent less and spread over 61 days more than the flood of 1924, the most intense flood in the state’s recorded history, submerging as it did almost the entire coastline. So why has the recent calamity wrought damage on a scale last seen when the state received 3,368 mm rainfall 94 years ago? That’s because Kerala has reduced its capacity to deal with such extreme floods by allowing illegal stone quarrying, cutting down forests and grasslands, changing drainage patterns and sand mining on river beds, experts say.
“Rampant stone quarrying and digging of pits is the reason behind the landslides and landslips, which worsened the situation in the Kerala floods,” Madhav Gadgil, ecologist and founder of the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, told IndiaSpend. “These quarries cause deforestation and block the natural streams, which help in reducing the intensity of the floods.”
And it’s not just Kerala. "Almost each of India’s 400-plus rivers is in the grip of the sand mining mafia." Warnings to governments have been ignored, "buckling under the pressure of sand mining and quarrying lobbies."
These are not just natural events. There are unjustified human interventions in natural processes which need to be stopped
Why are governments the world over – local or national – so toothless in the face of lobbying from the mining and minerals industry?
