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Erm, correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't Fresno need something like 50 years of rain to replete the water table?
by niels_olson 10y ago
Erm, correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't Fresno need something like 50 years of rain to replete the water table?
- Neliquat 10y agoThe water table is a seperate but related issue. And it would take a large amount of rain, and time to replenish. Not likely to happen faster than use, especially with the asinine ag well exemptions.
- staticautomatic 10y agoI think you mean replenish. Replete is an adjective.
- milcron 10y agoI'd believe that. This article is about the Northern part of California.
- plussed_reader 10y agoWater is an 'all of California' issue.
- milcron 10y agoRight, but the headline "rains have satisfied the drought debt" only applies to the North.
- plussed_reader 10y agoAnd only in a narrowly defined way. It speaks nothing to the continued die off of the forests due to the drought, the battle for water table control with all the private interests, let alone what up stream sources may or may not have been replenished. The 'drought' is far from over.
- floatrock 10y agoSomething like that. Aquifers are different from reservoirs -- reservoirs are our above-ground water stores, aquifers are our below ground water stores. The problem is that while reservoirs can be refilled from the surface watershed with a good rainy season or two, aquifers take decades of water slowly percolating down through the soil to replenish. If your rate of consumption exceeds the refill rate, well, you're in a bit of an unsustainable situation and the clock starts ticking. As the drought progressed and surface water became scarce, agriculture started drilling deeper and deeper wells to access the aquifer reserves. The aquifers got so drained that there were stories of fracking companies being hired to drill wells which had depths beyond the capabilities of most traditional well-drilling machines. Worse, there's also positive feedback loops at play -- as an aquifer gets depleted, the ground above it can settle in a way that slows the refill rate (I've heard it described as the volume occupied by the water goes away so dirt fills in the small gaps creating more compacted/sealed off soil). If the refill rate slows down and your consumption rate stays steady or increases (development!), well, the aquifer's rate of depletion accelerates. Feedback is a bitch. The anecdote about fracking companies being called in to drill super-deep water wells tells you all you need to know about how market forces price the sustainable consumption of our water reserves.
- elihu 10y agoAnother interesting thing that can happen (I don't know if this is a concern in California, but I've heard that it's a major problem in Jakarta, Indonesia) is that if you're close to the ocean, pulling fresh water from the ground can result in the fresh water being displaced by salt water which makes the aquifer useless.
- dubyah 10y agoIt's a problem in SoCal. They mitigate it by using injection wells in coastal areas as a seawater barrier. Orange County's initial efforts of using RO treated wastewater were for seawater barrier injection wells.
- khuey 10y agoThis is a big concern in South Florida. A number of wells had to be moved inland due to salt water intrusion in the aquifer near the coast.
- fred_is_fred 10y ago50 years of rain would do alot for Fresno, especially if it was constant.