I think at some level we all knew this was true.
Groundwater and oil extraction are causing the ground beneath Houston to sink faster than any other major city in the U.S., according to a new study in Nature Cities.
A group of researchers from across the country used satellite data to measure vertical land movement in the 28 most populous U.S. cities. The academics were able to map shifts down to the millimeter.
More than 40% of Houston’s land mass is subsiding at least one-fifth of an inch per year, they said, but that rate varies drastically across the city. The worst spots are sinking 10 times faster.
“While often considered solely a coastal hazard due to relative sea-level rise, subsidence also threatens inland urban areas, causing increased flood risks, structural damage, and transportation disruptions,” the authors wrote, adding that across the nation the land was sinking “mainly due to groundwater extraction.”
In Houston, they said, oil and gas extraction has also had a major impact on the topographic shifts.
Other cities in Texas, including Fort Worth and Dallas, were among the fastest-sinking as well. Study authors pointed out the damages sustained by large cities facing uneven land shifts.
“Over time, this subsidence can produce stresses on infrastructure that will go past their safety limit,” said Leonard Ohenhen, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the Columbia Climate School.
Houston’s well-known subsidence issues have been hotly debated over the years. Many companies and landowners have doubled down on their right to extract underground stores of water and oil, even as authorities like the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District initiated regional collaboration to up the area’s use of surface water in an effort to reduce the city’s sinking.
The link in the story is to the news release about the study. I have no idea what we can do about it, but at least now we know. If there are any scientists and science funding left in a few years, maybe we’ll be able to make some plans to mitigate things.