{"id":17939,"date":"2016-03-06T07:00:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-06T07:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=17939"},"modified":"2016-03-06T03:47:45","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T03:47:45","slug":"kalimpong-day-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/03\/06\/kalimpong-day-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Kalimpong Day 3: the downstream effects of poor urban water management"},"content":{"rendered":"
Kalimpong Day 3: the downstream effects of poor urban water management<\/h5>\n

The town of Kalimpong sits on a ridge high above the valley floor.\u00a0 In common with many urban areas in poor countries (and sometimes in countries that are not poor too), water management is a serious problem, with a lack of sewers and storm drains.\u00a0 The upshot is that large volumes of water flow unregulated into natural channels during heavy rainfall, causing problems downstream.\u00a0 On Kalimpong Day 3, part of of our UKIERI<\/a> \/ British Council<\/a> supported visit, we saw a dramatic example of this issue.\u00a0 This gully lies a few kilometres downstream of the town.\u00a0 In living memory this was an area of paddy fields; now it has been eroded out and enlarged as the gully has had to handle greatly increased storm flows:<\/p>\n

\"Kalimpng

Kalimpong Day 3: members of the field party in front of a heavily eroded gully downstream from Kalimpong town<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

I suspect that the course of this gully follows an ancient landslide that was inactive until this gully enlarged.\u00a0 This image shows the walls of the gully – note the very heavily weathered and disturbed schist bedrock.\u00a0 The amount of erosion caused by the gully is very clear.\u00a0 Wing Commander Praful Rao from Save the Hills<\/a> is standing at the top of the section for scale:<\/p>\n

\"Kalmipong

Kalimpong Day 3: erosion in a gully exposing an ancient landslide<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately the erosion in the gully is now triggering extensive landsliding.\u00a0 Immediately adjacent to the gully there slopes are actively deforming – sliding into the channel, which of course will cause further erosion.\u00a0 The path provides evidence of how bad this movement has become:<\/p>\n

\"Kalimpong

Kalimpong Day 3: Signs of serious instability in a footpath<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

This path is the access to a small community living on the other side of the gully from the road.\u00a0 Sadly, this community is also located on an ancient landslide that has also been reactivated by erosion in the gully.\u00a0 The effects on the houses are devastating:<\/p>\n

\"Kalimpong

Kalimpong Day 3: landslide damage to a house<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The damage to this house is not the fault of those living there, but is most likely the result of poor drainage in the town above.\u00a0 This problem is being exacerbated by a host of other things that are going on in this area.\u00a0 So, for example, at the top of the actively deforming slope with the path shown above, someone is dumping construction waste in an uncontrolled manner:<\/p>\n

\"Kalimpong

Kalimpong Day 3: uncontrolled dumping of construction waste on an active landslide<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Adding a surcharge to the top of an active landslide in this way will inevitably make the stability problem worse.\u00a0 This sort of practice should be outlawed.\u00a0 Sadly, the effects of this dumping will be both further environmental damage and the destruction of the path that provides access to the community on the far side of the gully.\u00a0 This is all very preventable – there is a need for serious action to manage the slopes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Kalimpong Day 3 we visited a gully that is being actively eroded as a result of poor urban water management in the town<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":17944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[469,5,1069,983,959,72],"class_list":["post-17939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-featured","tag-india","tag-kalimpong","tag-landslide-images","tag-landslide-report","tag-south-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}