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How groundwater pumping is causing cities to sink at 'worrying speed' - BBC News

bbc.co.uk · 2,418 words · saved by 1 readers

Twenty-two years ago, when Erna stood outside her house, “the windows were as high as my chest”. Now they’re knee-height. As their home has sunk, she and her family have had to cope with frequent flooding. In the most extreme cases “we used canoes - the water kept coming in and swamped the ground floor”, she says. Erna lives in the Indonesian capital Jakarta - one of the fastest-sinking cities in the world. Her home is in one of the worst-affected areas, the north of the city, and is now much lower than the road. The 37-year-old grew up here and remembers playing in nearby streets and praying in the mosque - that is now long gone, permanently underwater, as is the old port. The walls of her home, built in the 1970s, are cracked, and you can see where thick layers of concrete have been added to the floor to try to restore it to ground level - about 10 times since it was built, and a metre thick in some places. The house is still subsiding, and Erna can’t afford to move. This is one of d

How groundwater pumping is causing cities to sink at 'worrying speed' - BBC News Close menu english navigation Cities around the world are sinking at ‘worrying speed’ By: Aghnia Adzkia, Andro Saini, Arvin Supriyadi, Ayu Idjaja, BBC World Service 7 June 2025 World Animation enabled Twenty-two years ago, when Erna stood outside her house, “the windows were as high as my chest”. Now they’re knee-height. As their home has sunk, she and her family have had to cope with frequent flooding. In the most extreme cases “we used canoes - the water kept coming in and swamped the ground floor”, she says. Er

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