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Water Storage

Engineers have discovered that sometimes, the best way to conserve water is to pour it into the ground.

Sound bizarre? It’s not as strange as it sounds. Storing water in natural, underground aquifers is not a new idea. Mother Nature has been doing it for eons. Keeping it above the ground in reservoirs was man’s idea, and in some places – where farming practices have changed or where global warming has reduced snow melts (and thus stream flows) – those above-ground storage pools are losing far too much water to evaporation.

For example, the City of Hays, Kansas, gets its water from the Cedar Bluff Reservoir 20 miles upstream. But changes in the way people farm mean less water is flowing downstream and back into the reservoir these days, and with lower inflow comes higher evaporation rates. Hydrology experts eventually figured out that they would lose less water if they drained part of the reservoir into an underground aquifer than if they allowed it to disappear into thin air. They can recoup the water when it’s needed by tapping into city wells.

The method will allow cities to survive droughts and eliminate the need to pipe water in from neighboring cities and towns. It could well provide a solution for drought-plagued areas in the American southwest, where water supplies are expected to worsen as global warming reduces the amount of snow pack each year. Melting snow in the Sierra Nevada, for example, feeds streams and rivers that provide water to much of California. But as the snow pack shrinks, streams dry up.

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To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org