How Sand Mining Makes Cities Vulnerable

While defending ourselves (the subject might be anything) , we often make a quip “am I responsible for all the natural calamities, too?” inadvertently, feeling floored by our own sense of humour. However, we humans are responsible for them, as a matter of fact. While nurturing the dreams of buying a home may look like a harmless personal aspiration, this, too, impacts the environment in ways we do not realise. It is in this context we must look at sand mining and related activities that are a must for construction activities but make our cities vulnerable by causing damages of several kinds.

To fulfil the housing needs of our ever-rising population, sand mining activities have seen a sharp rise in the past two decades. A large part of this activity is unregulated and ends up making places where sand mining is done vulnerable to natural calamities. Large-scale instream sand mining and dredging causes degradation of rivers and banks' erosion. The physical impact of this would be that bridges and buildings close to sand mining locations would be more likely to collapse.

Poorly planned activities also lead to polluting the river water, which is used for several activities by people living nearby. While any leakages that might take place during the mining activity would pollute the water, irresponsible stockpiling may affect the river water even more adversely. On the other hand, instream sand mining widens river mouths and deepens their inner sanctums. This also means saline waters would flow if there are an ocean in around the area. Such water would severely impact the health of those who might use them for domestic purposes.

So, if you have bought a river-facing house hoping to get a beautiful view, you may actually have to pay a lot to drink clean water if sand mining activities are taking place along the river.  Even if there is an underground pipeline promising to provide you with clean water, there is always the fear of it getting damaged as dredging activities are on in full flow. It may take you some time before you realise that you might be drinking polluted water.

On the other hand, if you bought a house anywhere close where such activities are taking place, be sure of drastic changes in the existing scenic beauty in future. The adverse ecological impact of mining activities will by and by damage the flora and fauna of the area and the natural habitats of the winged visitors.  

There is no denying the fact that cities need homes to shelter their people. And to build houses, they would need to extract sand. However, without maintaining a balance between the two, cities may end up becoming vulnerable to natural calamities. While we often wonder why an hour of rain is enough to create a flood-like situation in cities like Delhi and Gurgaon, we should actually not be surprised at it. We already know the answer of the question why our cities, which are bustling with construction activity, can't accommodate a decent amount of rainwater.