Friday, July 17, 2015

Counting twice

Many in California and Arizona - especially agriculture factories - don't accept the fact that groundwater in aquifers and surface water in rivers and reservoirs are not separate supplies but interconnected parts of the same system. In California, 60% of the water comes from underground, in Arizona it's 50%. So, they're really kidding themselves and are very likely to run out of water much sooner than they think. As a leading hydrologist says, “If you don’t connect the two, then you don’t understand the system. And if you don’t understand the system, I don’t know how in the hell you’re going to make any kind of judgment about how much water you’ve got to work with.”

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