Rich Man, Poor Man

Dear Mouse,

According to Kevin Rodolfo, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois in Chicago and currently adjunct professor at the UP National Institute of Geological Sciences, the worsening flood problems of the country could be blamed to both the rich and the poor; the rich for their fishponds, housing projects and logging operations and the poor for their dependence on artesian wells.

The “sins” of the rich are not new to me but the “sin” of the poor makes me wonder what other options do they have for their source of water.

The fishponds operation is not a mortal sin but altering the flow of river in order to expand the ponds is :

Rodolfo stated:

"There are fishponds which are 30 hectares on paper, but aerial photos show they are actually 60 hectares," he said. Because their owners widen their property by carving up the natural banks, the river's width becomes irregular, and its water flow gets choked.”

"But nature is not like that because a river allowed to run its course gets wider downstream”

“It's the rich "who could afford" the manpower and machines capable of wiping out patches of forests whose root systems hold the soil together and prevent erosion and rainwater runoffs from the uplands down to the plains.”

As to the poor, he pointed out that they are guilty of the least understood but it is actually most important cause of flooding, the land subsidence.

He said:

“Their excessive extraction of groundwater through artesian wells that could run 24 hours a day, causes land subsidence. This simply means that the land has been "going down" by up to almost a centimeter each year closer to sea level, making the area more flood-prone.”

The Cat sez:

If artesian wells contribute to causes of flooding, where are the poor going to get their water ?

The Ca t