Groundwater is mostly non-renewable, study finds

[Ichingcarpenter]

The water that supplies aquifers and wells that billions of people rely on around the world is mostly a non-renewable resource that could run out, a new Canadian-led study has found.

While many people may think groundwater is replenished by rain and melting snow the way lakes and rivers are, underground water is actually renewed much more slowly.

In fact, just six per cent of the groundwater around the world is replenished within a "human lifetime" of 50 years, reports University of Victoria hydrogeologist Tom Gleeson and his collaborators in a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience today.

That water tends to be mainly found within a few hundred metres of the surface, where it is most vulnerable to being contaminated by pollution or depleted by higher temperatures and reduced rainfall as a result of climate change, the researchers found.

"Groundwater is a super-important resource," Gleeson said in an interview with CBC News. "It's used by more than a third of the world's population every day for their drinking water and it's used by agriculture and industry."

More than a third of the Canadian population relies on groundwater, including the entire population of P.E.I. and some fairly large urban centres such as Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph in Ontario, Gleeson added.

Because groundwater is so important to billions of people around the world, Gleeson and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Calgary, and the University Gottingen were interested in finding out how much groundwater there is in the world and to get an idea of when it will run out.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/groundwater-study-1.3318137


Fracking............ what a great idea to destroy your
planet.

[femmedem]

1. Chilling. n/t

[DFW]

2. Compared to the water crisis,

The "oil" crises of yore will seem like an argument over Coke vs. Pepsi

[callous taoboy]

3. Shit.

I did not know it took so long to replenish the aquifers. I live in an area that has been at stage 3 and stage 4 drought for the last 6 or 7 years. Whenever we'd get a good rainstorm I used to think that this will help our aquifers we drink from. Again, shit.

[postulater]

4. Dune.

[Dustlawyer]

5. Might kinda be important to know, how much and how long.

[blackspade]

6. Lovely.

Just what we need. Another vector for the collapse of civilization brought to us by energy corporations and their bought politicians. Yay.....

[Divernan]

7. Drilling/fracking a single well requires 4.4 million gallons of water

4.4 million gallons of water is what 11,000 American families use per day.

63% of that water comes from "surface water withdrawal"
20% comes from water purchased from public water utilities.
15% flowback and treated waste water from previously fracked wells.

https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2013/03/12/how-much-water-it-takes-to-frack-a-well/

[Javaman]

8. well...

we're fucked.

[Crystalite]

9. Never mind fracking, how about wholesale overdevelopment?

Ending fracking is a no-brainer, but how many communities have been built on a dependence upon groundwater?

And in areas where there's been overdrafting, the consequences are dire.

In some of these areas, the high cost of a new meter, $40,000 - $50,000 along the California Central Coast for example, is preventing too much new development (but the uber-wealthy don't mind).

And often it's big agricultural concerns which can be blamed for the overdrafting and which manage to escape protective measures like tiered charges. And these concerns constitute a lot of the jobs.

So, what's the solution? More and more are looking at desalination plants to ease the pain.

And THAT's not a good thing.

Maybe we should live within our environmental means rather than using one technology after another to get out of the messes that earlier technologies have helped to create.