Battling India’s Sand Barons
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/05/battling-indias-sand-barons
He says this adds up to tremendous profits for the industry that encourage rampant mining of sand. Major rivers, such as the Thamirabarani and the Palar, have sunk 30 feet below ground level due to excessive mining.
Much of this mining is illegal. State law prohibits mining of more than five vertical feet of sand, but miners regularly dig much deeper. And the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change stipulates that mining in quarries with lease areas of between five and 25 hectares can only be done manually. Many of Tamil Nadu’s sand mines fall within this size but the use of heavy equipment, such as sand mining dredges, is common.
“The sad reality is that the mining stops only when the sand’s been completely extracted. So when the monsoons come along, there is no sand to retain water in the rivers and they flow straight to the sea, as if through a water hose,” said Mugilan. “The groundwater levels keep constantly dropping and the once glorious river systems, which were the lifeline for the state’s agriculture industry, are now in pathetic conditions.”
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