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Earth United States

In the US, Wells Being Drilled Ever Deeper as Groundwater Vanishes (arstechnica.com) 161

Posted by msmash from the growing-challenge dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Groundwater is an "invisible resource," writes environmental engineer Debra Perrone. It "flows slowly under our feet through cracks in rocks and spaces in sediments," she says, contrasting it with the more visible and obvious dams and rivers on the surface. This invisible resource is a quiet hero, supplying around a quarter of the US' daily freshwater needs. Its distributed nature makes groundwater a challenging resource to manage. Unlike on the surface, where we can manage through public infrastructure like dams and reservoirs, groundwater is mostly tapped through millions of wells drilled by individuals, businesses, and farms. But current levels of groundwater use are not sustainable: resources are being steadily depleted as groundwater use outpaces natural replenishment. This depletion means that shallower wells may run dry. Across the US, people are drilling deeper and deeper wells, report Perrone and her colleague Scott Jasechko in a paper in Nature Sustainability this week. That suggests that the easy-to-access water is already vanishing. But it's also not sustainable to keep going deeper.
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In the US, Wells Being Drilled Ever Deeper as Groundwater Vanishes More

In the US, Wells Being Drilled Ever Deeper as Groundwater Vanishes

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  • Poor article, nothing new. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25, 2019 @01:23PM (#58985896)

    This has been known for decades, and anyone that lives in a region with high agricultural use of aquifers is well familiar with the problem. Much of the middle of the country is pumping like mad to sustain farms, and they're well aware that it'll come to an end some day. The desert southwest has decided to deplete water in some cities at completely unsustainable rates.

    Phoenix for instance, has been named "worlds least sustainable city"
    https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/20/phoenix-least-sustainable-city-survive-water

    The problem is a lot of people think of water like they think of oil. Like it's all one big global market. Water is all local. Me saving a gallon of water in water rich Minnesota has exactly zero impact on someone in Phoenix.

    • Re: Poor article, nothing new. (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      TFA completely misses the point in going for its overzealous environmental slant. Building codes have forced deeper wells in most of the East. In most places, minimum well depth is 30'... even in places that were served by springhouses or artesian wells for the previous 200 years.
      Cali should also come as no surprise.. put a few million people in a desert... duh.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Most of the problem with depletion of aquifers happens in the west and central states. The plain states used to be called the great american desert. California is largely a desert. These places have never had a sustainable human presence post-colonization and only continue via taking water from future generations or other states.

        Not acknowledging the regional nature of this problem by the arstechnica writer is a disservice to the audience. This is not a "US problem" and those causing the issue should not be

      • Most of California is a Mediterranean|semi-arid climate (~75%), with only around 20% of it's landmass is considered a desert: areas to the south-east, bordering Nevada, Arizona and Mexico.

        Source: Geography of California [wikipedia.org].

    • Me saving a gallon of water in water rich Minnesota has exactly zero impact on someone in Phoenix.

      So the future's big fucking pipelines?

    • . Much of the middle of the country>/b> is pumping like mad to sustain farms, and they're well aware that it'll come to an end some day. The desert southwest has decided to deplete water in some cities at completely unsustainable rates.

      "Nearly three-quarters of irrigated acres are in the 17 western-most contiguous States (referred to as the Western States hereafter)."

      USDA [usda.gov]

    • Also from MN, and I expect that within my lifetime, other states are going to be eyeing our resources hungrily.

      My guess is that some dirty politician from Chicago will be the first to break the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • What gets me about Phoenix and similar areas is the gigantic golf courses that abound. These hogs of land and water serve a fraction of the populace and create economic dead zones about them.

  • Drill baby, drill (Score:4, Funny)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @01:23PM (#58985898)
    Good thing we don't have droughts anywhere, or looming water shortages, right?

    Also, I wish we could shut the hippy dippy types up and get more focus on the practical effects of our environment. I get it. Hippies are annoying. Also they're 1/8 Hipster [youtube.com]. But I swear, we've got people fighting against clean air and water for Pete's sake...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Also, I wish we could shut the hippy dippy types up and get more focus on the practical effects of our environment..

      OK, how about this for the most practical, least hippy statement of the problem:

      7 billion people are not sustainable. Full stop.

      7 billion people is well beyond the sustainable carrying capacity of this planet. All we keep doing is rearranging deck chairs.

      About the only counter I've ever heard to this is "the number of people are not the problem. People in the developing counties -- where most of the population is -- use much less resources, and when they rise out of poverty their population growth slows d

      • 7 billion people are not sustainable. Full stop.

        They are if you condition them to small living spaces and feed 'em bugs.

        Just saying... :)

        • And drink their own pee like Bear Grillis

    • Also, I wish we could shut the hippy dippy types up and get more focus on the practical effects of our environment. I get it. Hippies are annoying.

      And here I was thinking you were one. ;)

  • anyone else read "Wells being drilled" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    and think of Dawn Wells [dailymail.co.uk] and do a double take? Oh that Gilligan!
    CROFL

  • It's easy to build a combined solar desalinization plant and diffuse the impact of desalinization. Pipelining water across the country is also a simple matter.

    Where does all that water go when you use it?

    Does it evaporate? Does it go into the ground and raise a local water table, causing instability (mudslides etc)? Will it change local humidity, affect the local climate, cause weather? Will it increase nosema and destroy the bee population?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Pipelining water across the country is also a simple matter.

      I don't think you understand the energy requirements.

    • It's easy to build a combined solar desalinization plant and diffuse the impact of desalinization. Pipelining water across the country is also a simple matter.

      Where does all that water go when you use it?

      Does it evaporate? Does it go into the ground and raise a local water table, causing instability (mudslides etc)? Will it change local humidity, affect the local climate, cause weather? Will it increase nosema and destroy the bee population?

      Pipelines? You don't seem to understand the volume of water we are discussing here and the cost involved in building and operating pipelines large enough to move that kind of water uphill (in most cases). We are talking about a lot of pipes, right of way, pumping stations and may many miles of it. It's a LONG way from the ocean to where a lot of our food is grown.

      Then, assuming you have pipelines in place, taking the salt out of enough sea water won't be cheap either.

      Where does it go? Let me see, the ar

      • Pipelines? You don't seem to understand the volume of water we are discussing here and the cost involved in building and operating pipelines large enough to move that kind of water uphill (in most cases). We are talking about a lot of pipes, right of way, pumping stations and may many miles of it. It's a LONG way from the ocean to where a lot of our food is grown.

        The pipelines aren't a problem. Across much of the US we already have "pipelines" called rivers and canals that bring sufficient water the other way.

        The only problem is getting enough energy to purify and pump the water uphill.

      • You don't seem to understand the volume of water we are discussing here

        Can you put that figure in barrels of oil? How about in comparison to the amount of water we pipe around these areas as-is? For example, Phoenix is fed by the Verde River, whereas the Gulf of California is 2.5x as far. The Goldfields Water Supply in Australia lifted 1.7 million liters 400 meters, spanning 530km... in 1903. There's a pipeline in California that moved 100 billion gallons of water 137 miles in 1957.

        Where does it go? Let me see, the area is usually dry and hot... Um.. evaporation perhaps?

        And then where? Does it just disappear? Does it migrate back to the coast from which it

  • Opprotunity! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25, 2019 @01:28PM (#58985928)

    Reminds me of a story from a few years back during the height of the California drought. The almond crop was in danger since it is the most water intensive and there weren't enough drillers to go around for all farming. But almonds were also the most profitable. So what happened? Freaking hedge funds went around buying up almond farms, throwing their money at monopolizing well drilling and making the problem worse!

    Sure, it rained 3 years later, probably nobody died, and if you didn't live on a farm in the central valley you probably only noticed if you closely watch what you pay for a bag of almonds. But when these droughts become widespread, expect profiteering to make the problem much worse than it needs to be.

    • Re:Opprotunity! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25, 2019 @01:48PM (#58986044)

      California regulators let this happen. This is about a failure of the state to properly regulate water.

      Huge farming corporations own most of the water. They get the water cheap, use it to produce certain high value corps, and then export it for top dollar. People in cities get water use restrictions while the big agricultural users get all of the water they need. It burns me that such a precious public resource goes directly to the coffers of private corporations. We fight over future plans like desalination while huge farms flood the desert in the middle of the day. Seriously, WTF?

      • California regulators let this happen. This is about a failure of the state to properly regulate water.

        Huge farming corporations own most of the water. They get the water cheap, use it to produce certain high value corps, and then export it for top dollar. People in cities get water use restrictions while the big agricultural users get all of the water they need. It burns me that such a precious public resource goes directly to the coffers of private corporations. We fight over future plans like desalination while huge farms flood the desert in the middle of the day. Seriously, WTF?

        But regulating a public good like water or clean air is socialism!
        Free market all the way to the grave!

  • I see that the Chinese are really going through with this hoax by pumping out the groundwater from under the US.

  • What prevents us from harnessing its unlimited potential?Is it econmic viability and the fact that fresh water sources are still not depleted enough or is the technology simply not mature enough?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by fustakrakich ( 1673220 )

      What prevents us from harnessing its unlimited potential?

      The financial industry.

    • What prevents us from harnessing its unlimited potential?Is it econmic viability and the fact that fresh water sources are still not depleted enough or is the technology simply not mature enough?

      The gating factor in desalination is the energy cost of pushing saltwater through ion-filtering membranes. If we could use substances like graphene as membranes, the pressure needed, and cost, could drop substantially.
      https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]

  • Those that overdraw on natural resources eventually exhaust them and die. Not in any way surprising or unexpected.

  • When I had my well drilled, they hit water at around 40' but I wanted to go deeper because everyone else around that area was also into that shallow water. They didn't hit water again until around 800'. Cost quite a bit more to get down to but I'm happy I went deeper.

    • lucky you. we got our water at 250', 25GPM. So we thought "hey! we got all the water we need".. But no, it's at 90x the safe levels of arsenic.

      So even with wells, it's not just the amount of water, it's the potability of it. :(

      • lucky you. we got our water at 250', 25GPM. So we thought "hey! we got all the water we need".. But no, it's at 90x the safe levels of arsenic.

        So even with wells, it's not just the amount of water, it's the potability of it. :(

        In my area (rural northern AZ) we have a large sheet of groundwater filtering slowly through deep limestone from a 12,600' volcano which attracts rainclouds and whose cinder soaks up all the water without any runoff. But the well water we tap from this aquifer has 20 ppm of arsenic, which was fine until the feds lowered the limit from 50 ppm to 10. Now we need an expensive machine to filter down to the new standard.

        But now that we have less of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] in our water, we have exp

  • Go on, keep making people (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Thursday July 25, 2019 @01:53PM (#58986072)
    Malthus was a great thinker. Either we cut the birth rate or we face eventual catastrophe. There's no middle ground.

    • Nonsense, the population will peak in the 2080s and then go down. Prosperity lowers birth rate. It's just an engineering problem, there are no shortages of water nor any other resource on planet earth despite scaremongering articles.

      • The current population growth is mostly in Africa. There is little reason to assume they will respond to a surfeit of resources in the same way Europe and East Asia have. What's more, people that do not respond to the modern world by having children at below replacement rates are the ones currently breeding. Their children we would assume would be more likely to behave in the same way as their parents... So while most people in Europe and the US respond this way for now this can't be assumed to continue

        • Their children we would assume would be more likely to behave in the same way as their parents..
          No, why would they?

          My wife is close to 50. She is the youngest daughter, 9 years younger than her next sister, of a family with 12 kids. Only 8 survived into adulthood.

          Most in her family have one kid. One has two. All kids they have one kid, except one here or there who has two.

          When my wife got 12 her mother introduced her into family planing/contraception and explained: "when I was young we had no contraception"

        • Yes, those in Africa will have to be lifted out of poverty, then the problem is solved. It's not impossible.

        • Re: Go on, keep making people (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Racist much?

          What is your basis for assuming humans living in Africa won't behave the same as humans living on other continents once access to modern lifestyles is widely available to them?

          Be specific, and explain why the same doesn't apply to Europeans or Asians...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If I had mod points, I would mod you Genius.

      People act like we have the ability to scale everything infinitely. We don't. We already have three times as many people as the world can provide for comfortably. What we need to do is phase out a large segment of the population with robots. It won't be pretty at first, but if we give some sort of voluntary rewards for sterilization, then the problem will solve itself smoothly.

      The problem we have now is that we reward popping out too many children via welfare

      • Does this mean we get to slam shut the borders to keep out other people's children? That's racist.

    • The birthrate anywhere of the planet, has nothing to do with any water problem anywhere in the USA.

  • Just like India (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25, 2019 @01:58PM (#58986110)

    This is the same mistake that India has been making... and the government subsidized bigger pumps and digging existing wells deeper. Now they are starting to realize that when the glaciers in the Himalayas are gone and their major rivers start to dry up they are in very serious trouble. Pretty close to the edge now. And sadly, they are not unique. But commercial scale agriculture is so profitable and beloved by governments at many levels... so why pull back now? And then add the ground water contamination from fracking. Lemmings...

  • "Name one ecosystem that is better off for having agriculture moved into it?" Toby Hemenway http://bit.ly/1pnapoW [bit.ly]

    "...reservoirs, designed to store water during exceptionally wet years, were considered all but useless... never built... 2016 & 2017 California received record snow & rainfall... windfall of millions of acre-ft of runoff was mostly let out to sea." http://bit.ly/2HnjQTR [bit.ly]

    "Grow food not lawns" http://bit.ly/2Cmyk2s [bit.ly]

  • Why is this news. Were you expecting people to drill shallower wells?

  • No one is really looking at the long term impacts of development and how the destruction of the watershed is causing this. When you pave so much surface, then build basins to accumulate the run-off and redirect this to other outfalls; you have now negated the places where the ground would absorb those water to feed the groundwater layers...

    #FormerSiteCivilDesigner

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • It's sad to hear the facts of this. Many people have seen the obvious, for example the images of water behind Hoover Dam, lower than ever since the lake first filled, baring the lighter-colored area that was once submerged. We may have seen some other surface indicators of a dearth of water, and of course most people can't manage to be concerned. Farmers, however, are very concerned. Municipalities that draw their water from well are concerned. Many people who depend on these wells should be concerned.

  • We need to replace coal/old nuclear power plants with new nuclear power plants (along with an assortment of hydro, geothermal, wind, and solar).
    These need to be done on the coastal areas and with it, add desalination plants that use the waste heat. If we simply use desalinated for 50-100 miles around the coastal areas, it would enable the rest of the nation to make much better use of rivers, great lakes, and of course, less of our groundwater.
    That ground water is going to be needed for future droughts

  • In some areas treated wastewater is heavily filtered to drinking water standards and injected back into the aquifer to replenish it. This could also be conceivably be done with storm water.

    • In South Australia we have several large aquifer replenishment projects, using wetlands to filter the water first. As it’s still not potable, it is seperately piped to parks and community areas for watering, relieving the potable water system of considerable usage.

      Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) has developed rapidly over the past 30 years in the Adelaide Metropolitan Area, with significant investment by the government and the private sector to develop MAR technology and increase its deployment. All MA

  • read about this 33 years ago: Cadillac Desert (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Darth Technoid ( 83199 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @08:12PM (#58988200)

    It's good to keep reminding people that the groundwater supply is not infinite and that, as aquifers are being depleted, the ground subsidence makes replenishing the supply ever harder.

    I read about this i the 1986 book, Cadillac Desert. Still a terrific read.

    If we don't so something, future generations will suffer the consequences. How selfish can we be!

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