A whole city goes underground in California

The community of Corcoran in the San Joaquin Valley is experiencing soil subsidence due to groundwater pumping.

The farming town of Corcoran in the US state of California is gradually sinking into the ground. The changes, almost imperceptible to local residents, can be seen in NASA satellite images, according to High Country News. 

It is noted that over the past 14 years, the city in some places has settled by 3.5 meters, which is equal to about one floor of a two-story residential building. 

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According to experts, the process of subsidence in the region is caused by the gradual depletion of land due to pumping out of groundwater.

“There’s no way around it,” said Jay Famiglietti, a former senior scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The scale of the bowl that’s been created from the pumping is large and that may be why people don’t perceive it. But a careful analysis would find there is lots of infrastructure potentially at risk.

Local farmers are actively extracting a large amount of groundwater for irrigation of crops, as a result of which the soil begins to sink.

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Every year Corcoran, with a population of almost 22 thousand people, slowly goes underground from a few centimeters to 0.6 meters. 

So far, neither roads nor buildings in the city are being destroyed, but the impact of the process on its topography is significant. 

The casings of drinking water wells have already been broken, and the town hall had to be rebuilt for ten million dollars. 

The Water Resources Management Agency predicts that the city will settle another 2-3 meters over the next 19 years. 

It’s a risk for us

said Mary Gonzales-Gomez, a lifelong Corcoran resident and chairwoman of the Kings County Board of Education.

We all know that, but what are we going to do? There’s really nothing that we can do. And I don’t want to move.

Image Credit: Ryan Christopher Jones via HighCountryNews