Here is a brief article I wrote for the current issue (March 2018) of Water Resources IMPACT - Managing Water Ethically. It's sure to raise the hackles of some, as I promote the concept of Managed Aquifer Depletion (MAD) to assess when a groundwater supply is going to run out and then manage it to prolong it for as long as possible.
Here are the first few paragraphs of the article.
Ethical, adjective: conforming to a standard of what is right and good; may suggest the involvement of more difficult or subtle questions of rightness, fairness, or equity. - Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
A Long Time Ago in a University Far, Far Away
I recall the day with uncharacteristic clarity. It was 47 years ago this month. I sat at the University of Arizona office of my advisor, Eugene S. Simpson. At the time I was a graduate student in his groundwater hydraulics class. Two of my classmates and I listened as Gene waxed eloquent about groundwater management in California. He was unimpressed with it. So what else is new, you're saying.
Gene pointed out that we had known about land subsidence in the San Joaquin Valley as early as the 1930s, yet here we stood in 1971 (try 2018) and subsidence was still occurring. He did note that to lessen groundwater pumping and mitigate subsidence, surface water was now being transported from northern California to the valley and points farther south.
"So what's the safe yield of the San Joaquin Valley groundwater system?" he inquired. Safe yield was a vague concept in vogue at that time. It purported to indicate how much groundwater we could take from an aquifer without producing an undesirable effect(s). Clearly, safe yield hinges upon what one considers 'undesirable effects' and their evaluation. Gene asked us what some relevant undesirable effects were.
We named the usual suspects: land subsidence; streamflow depletion; economics (pumping costs increase as well water levels drop); conflict (causing someone else's well water levels to drop); water quality degradation; impairing another's water rights, etc. The perceptive reader will note that nowhere is something like 'degrading ecosystems' mentioned. Remember, this was 1971. We three were happy with what we had produced.
Gene took a long draw on his corncob pipe. His next question, asked with an impish smile, threw us for a loop: "Does this have anything to do with the ethical management of groundwater?"
Almost fifty years would pass before I addressed that question.
That day has arrived.
Okay - you'll have to read the article: Download MAD_Article
Enjoy! Or not.
"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims. [The challenge is] to make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time, with spontaneous cooperation and without ecological damage or disadvantage of anyone" - R. Buckminster Fuller (thanks.@highlyanne)
ETHICAL GROUNDWATER WITDRAWAL ......... is there any more difficult query...???
My reply which is not rooted in science is that when it comes to the subject of WATER at least in Arizona ... science, logic, prudent, ethics suddenly are set aside in favor of politics, power, $$$$, control and favorable legal precedents..
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Oh...and don’t forget ... let’s not provide full disclosure and transparency to the citizen of Arizona about actual factual WATER conditions thorough our state, region ... instead provide the public with BS sound bites ... “currently Arizona has NO immediate water issues” ... while never defining “immediate”...
It’s a dance and when that music finally stops it will be most interesting to see who is left without a chair...
Posted by: PAUL MILLER | Thursday, 29 March 2018 at 10:35 AM
Mad, indeed....but that is the human approach to taking what it wants from the environment. In this country, the concept behind manifest destiny has shaped our use (and abuse) of resources [and even other humans, for that matter] and set the course of our history. Will it change? Highly unlikely without being forced by obvious cataclysm.
"MAD" seems a reasoned approach to the same end....just prolonging the inevitable.
Posted by: EJ Hanford | Thursday, 29 March 2018 at 07:42 AM