The country is going down.
This isn’t my opinion, it’s the finding of a recently published study, showing that 28 of the most populous U.S. cities are sinking. These are not just coastal cities; there are also ones in the interior — including Nashville, Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis, Columbus, Charlotte, Oklahoma City, and more.
The study uses satellite data to map out vertical movements down to the millimeter, in 90-by -90-foot grids. In 25 of our cities, ⅔ of the total area is sinking, affecting more than 35 million people.
The fastest sinking U.S. cities are in Texas, starting with Houston, followed by Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio. Other fast-sinking cities are New York, Las Vegas, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.
Groundwater removal is the cause of 80% of the sinkage, although in Texas, the pumping of gas and oil is also a significant factor. Unless replenished, the space formerly occupied by water, gas or oil starts to collapse, leading to underground compaction, and sinking at the surface.
We’re talking about a quarter-inch per year, which may seem like no big deal, but eight of these sinking cities have already experienced more than 90 significant floods in the last 20 years.
Another problem is that the sinking occurs at different rates in different parts of the cities, or in some cases, some areas are sinking while others are rising. You don’t have to be a structural engineer to imagine the kind of impact land motion could have on buildings and other structures, especially if part of the foundation is moving up and part is moving down.
As for what to do about it, researchers noted that where flooding is the issue, land-raising, enhanced drainage systems and green infrastructure (such as artificial wetlands) to absorb floodwaters are likely part of the solution. Where the tilting or cracking of buildings is concerned, it will require retrofitting existing structures and that we account for land motion in future building and development plans.
Mind you, we’re not the only ones going down; cities are sinking all over the world. Among the most prominent ones are London, Lagos, Alexandria, Dublin, Bangkok, Amsterdam, Venice, Manila, Jakarta, Hamburg, and Hong Kong, to name a few. Literally, cities all around the globe.
Picture the Earth sucking in on itself from all directions.
I imagine a slowly deflating balloon, crumpling here, creasing there, changing shape and getting gradually smaller, but the truth is, despite the sinking, we are not shrinking. Even with our annual weight loss of 66,000 tons, we are not getting smaller due to other forces at play, such as the spreading out of the ocean floor and the release of gases from deep within the Earth which cause an increase in surface area.
“Sinking” is not the only way we are going down, though, these days.
A look at the economic data shows that in the first quarter: our GDP was down, spending was down; stock market, down; worker productivity, down, homeownership rates, down; consumer confidence, down …
Of the 500 top publicly-traded U.S. companies, profits were down for ¾ of them, across all 11 sectors.
Not all the news was bad, nor all the data a downer, but overall, for the first quarter, the U.S. economy, which had grown for 10 consecutive quarters, was down (by -0.3 percent).
More important to me than any of that, though, is that the indicators we use to measure freedom, fairness and justice — which are the bedrock principles of our nation — are, in my view, also in decline.
It suggests to me that the love we Americans have for our beautiful system of government, with its separation of powers and its checks and balances, as established in 1787, and which we have strived to perfect since then, is waning. Polls show the percentage of Americans who believe that democracy is the way to go, is at an all-time low, and that’s a downward trend I find truly distressing.
