Quotes About Aquifers

The effect of climate change is not simply to reduce rain during the summer months, but also to increase the number of torrential storms. When the rain falls that hard and fast, it cannot sink into the ground and go down to the aquifers.

Water covers about 70 percent of the Earth's surface. Of this total, only about 2.5 percent is fresh water, and most of this is frozen in the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland, in soil moisture, or in deep aquifers not readily accessible for human use.

The Everglades are flat, and they border a rising ocean. As the sea levels rise, the shorelines erode, and that salty water travels inland, threatening the aquifers supplying fresh drinking water to Floridians.

When people pump too much water from coastal aquifers, saltwater can rush in. Thick with salt and minerals, seawater is denser than freshwater; once in an aquifer, there is no known way of flushing it out. Coastal aquifers are imperiled from Maine to Florida; on the Arabian coast; in the suburbs of Jakarta (metropolitan population, more than 10 million); throughout the Mediterranean; and in a host of other places.

the world of 10 billion, water experts project, the demand for water could be 50 percent higher than it is now. Where will it all come from? New supplies will not be easy to find. Few lakes and rivers are unexploited, and aquifers are being depleted. Equally difficult would be stretching existing water supplies by reducing waste and encouraging thrifty use. Adding to the pressure, climate change is shrinking glaciers and drying streams.

What has displaced TEL? Methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) became a leading additive by the late 1990s, but in 2000 the EPA announced its phase-out because of its adverse environmental effects (its solubility in water led to contamination of aquifers).