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It's worse, effectively, than the raw numbers, though. It's not like the aquifer is a swimming pool that you can pump out entirely from a single low point. It
by lostapathy 7y ago
It's worse, effectively, than the raw numbers, though. It's not like the aquifer is a swimming pool that you can pump out entirely from a single low point.
It's water in a porous rock formation. The more we deplete it, the deeper we have to drill wells and the less water comes out of any given well before it goes dry. And it's not like we can recover anywhere near 100% of the water for any amount of effort.
- tomjakubowski 7y agoThis report cites the same 3.6E3 km^3 figure (2.91 billion acre-feet) as the amount of "recoverable water" in the aquifer. Do you know if that accounts for the effects you described? https://ne.water.usgs.gov/projects/HPA/index.html https://ne.water.usgs.gov/projects/HPA/index.html edit: from the report Recoverable water in storage is the fraction of water in the aquifer that will drain by gravity and can be withdrawn by wells. The remaining water in the aquifer is held to the aquifer material and generally cannot be withdrawn by wells (Meinzer, 1923).