Sinking feeling: Philippine cities facing 'slow-motion disaster'

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When Mary Ann San Jose moved to Sitio Pariahan more than two decades ago, she could walk to the local chapel. Today, reaching it requires a swim.

The main culprit is catastrophic subsidence caused by groundwater being pumped out from below, often via unregulated wells for homes, factories, and farms catering to a booming population and growing economy.The steady sinking of coastal towns and islets like Pariahan in the northern Philippines has caused Manila Bay's brackish water to pour inland and displace thousands, posing a greater threat than rising sea levels due to climate change.

These days just the flooded chapel, a cluster of shacks on bamboo stilts where San Jose lives with her family, and a few homes on a bump of land remain.The children that live there commute 20 minutes by boat to a school inland and most of the residents eke out a living by fishing. The creeping bay waters put people and property at risk, while the threat is amplified by high-tides and flooding brought by the roughly 20 storms that pound the archipelago every year.

The sinking is very likely permanent because the ground in the hardest hit areas is mostly clay, which sticks together after the water is pulled out. A moratorium on new wells in the greater Manila area has been in place since 2004. But enforcing that ban as well as shuttering existing illegal wells, falls to the National Water Resource Board and its roughly 100 staffers who are responsible for policing the whole country.

 

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