KOCHI, India — Anthony Kuttappassera’s family has lived in the same house at the edge of the Arabian Sea for more than a century. He grew up drinking water from the pond and the well outside his home.
Each truckload of water has to be poured into barrels and buckets and carried by hand to the village’s 600 households. Although saltwater invasion of crucial groundwater supplies is a climate change problem around the world, richer nations can adapt more easily. It hits harder in countries like India, expected to surpass China as the world’s most populous nation this year. India is still regarded as a developing nation even as it has grown into one of the world’s largest economies.
“People are suffering because the aquifers are getting salinized,” said Bijoy Nandan, dean of marine sciences at Cochin University of Science and Technology. Salinity has increased by 30% to 40% since the first studies of water in the area in 1971, he said. Four giant trucks carrying 36,000 liters of water made it as far as a church parking lot, but couldn’t go any farther due to narrow winding streets. Their water was transferred into smaller tankers: 6,000 liters, 4,000 liters and even a toy-like 1,000-liter truck.