After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World - Chapter 798

Chapter 798: Preparing for the Heat Wave
They discussed the other two territories first because the issues and concerns for the satellites were much deeper and broader than what Alterra had to fix.

After all, unlike Alterra, the resources they could manipulate in the other two were very limited.

Other than adding parks, several underground construction was planned, and Althea would be assigning someone from the Engineering team to determine the sustainable sizes and areas for the population and their needs.

However, it probably wouldn’t be perfect and they estimated a few losses in the population regardless, but they did their best to consider everything.

Then they shifted back to Alterra, where they’d have a lot of control over.

“Our water sources must be secured,” Althea said, looking at the representatives of the construction team.

She looked at Oslo and Brianna, the Terran sub-lead of the construction team, “We’ll need to create more reservoirs or storage ponds from lake water.”

Of course, the ponds should still be able to have other uses like park ponds.

They would also build dams in redirected areas—of course, this was not to stop the river water going downstream for others as well.

…this was assuming no one upstream decided to do just that, of course.

She looked at Tanod and Mauru, the newest official captains (they were given a lot of contribution points by virtue of their roles in the Guia-Alterra war). “I need you to study the territories upstream.”

This was, so far, the only problem she could think of in terms of water sources (except for them possibly drying up).

Just as the world had a regeneration rate, the water also healed itself after a while, so they didn’t have to worry too much about people upstream poisoning their water. However, they wouldn’t be able to stop it if people decided to stop the water upstream.

It was normally not a problem because the river was wide and the people here wouldn’t have the technology, the skills, and time to build large dams, but in case of a drought, when the river would be dryer and narrower, nobody could tell what would be done.

Alterra was fortunate enough to be close to not only a river, but also a tributary from the mountain spring heading towards it. When they expanded, they would also cover another tributary from the mountains, which was a very ideal arrangement. Of course, they could also access it even if it was currently outside of the territory walls.

However, the main water source remained to be the river, which had an upstream (South) and a Downstream (North), heading to what was probably a bigger body of water.

Maybe they’d get to explore that route someday, but now was not that time.

The Xeno continent was large and there was still too much of the geography they didn’t know about, but for now, they could only make do with the information they had about the immediate region.

“You may need to sprint and you may request as many health potions in the pharmacy as you need.” Sprinting was really consuming of health and it was oftentimes not worth it, but this was too important in gathering information

She really wouldn’t put it below the people in Xeno to cut off everyone else’s path to survival to keep their own.

This surprised the aborigines indeed. They had heard of a few territories losing access to their water sources during droughts, but they just assumed it was because the river dried off. Now, they knew that it was also possible to be cut off by man.

They also considered what to do in the event of the river really drying off.

Even if their river was cut off, they still had the mountain springs.

They would also build massive underground tanks using dense concrete lined with waterproofing membranes (which were improved versions of the material discovered by Honey Guevarra).

They would definitely be laborious to make, but they should also be very sturdy and would be able to hold the entire territory’s source of water even if the drought lasted a month.

They would place a lot of these tanks around the territory, whether they were underground and elevated, just to make sure everyone had access to enough water, at least enough for survival.

It was a huge project, and very much a bit overbuilding, but it was better safe than sorry.

“We’d need a lot of ice as well.”

“We need to make a very large cellar to create enough ice with saltpeter,” Eugene said, scribbling calculations on a piece of paper as they spoke.

Although saltpeter could lower water’s freezing point, the temperature needed for it to work was still very low. If the temperature went too high, then their current basements wouldn’t be cold enough as it was.

Eugene and Winona looked at each other and nodded. “We’ll study it. If not, we’ll just improve the insulation.”

“Thank you.”

“A lot of digging and modification would be done,” they added. Including improved and expanded cellars, there were also tanks and other things.

“The goblins should arrive at Limestone Valley within the next few days,” Garan said.

The Steward team had left days ago. If they rushed and minimized their rest times, they should be in Iron Mountains by now.

They had given instructions to send a few hundred goblins to Limestone Valley. They would just need to ask for a bit more, so Alterra would get a few dozen, perhaps a hundred, as well.

Now that the basics of underground construction were on track, she turned to Gru, who smiled at her, already thinking about his own department while they were discussing.

“I already listed the drought-resistant plants—Terran or local. I will rank them and show them to you.”

Althea nodded. “Thank you.”

“Did we forget anything?”

“We should add an article regarding this in the newspaper and send it to all our associates,” Mathilda said, referring to their subsidiaries and their allies. “Can people from the Ferrol Branch read Terran though?”

“We’ll just send them some instructions,” Garan said. Not many members were left there as most were summoned to help with the Guia war.

Mathilda nodded. “We also need to propose to the territory some modifications to the rules and regulations as well.”

The rest of them nodded, with Mathilda taking note of some important considerations. They decided to put out revised rules once the extreme weather changes were publicized.

For instance, there would be rules regarding water conservation and the like. There might even be small punishments for those who wasted it.

There would also be guidelines and suggestions regarding the use of more drought-resistant crops to farm in the next cycle, even for those who had leased their farms. There would also be guides regarding the proper way to use their cellars, the other ways to prepare, the safety precautions to be taken during such a disaster, et cetera.

“We’ll need to impose a temporary tax to those who go beyond the per-person allowance for water.”

“Agreed.”

The group spent the next hour planning and formulating the rules and guides, planning on publishing them as soon as the major changes were witnessed.

The meeting ended a few hours later, and they knew that none of them would be able to sleep at all for a while.