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America is using up its groundwater like there’s no tomorrow: Overuse is draining and damaging aquifers nationwide
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- Title
- America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There's No Tomorrow
- Published
- Aug 28 2023
- Word count
- 1624 words
I'm wondering why there is no mention of water catchment in this article. If rain is going into the rivers and washing out into the oceans instead of getting back down into the aquifers, wouldn't catchment be a viable option for reclaiming water before it gets washed into the ocean? Is there someone here with better understanding and knowledge on this subject that could give me more information on the interaction of water catchment and the availability of water suitable for agriculture and consumption?
More just to the continued curiosity of this question, I wonder at what level is water capture also bad for the environment? In example, we start pulling the water from the sky and things like ground vegetation, trees, animals that live among the what greenery exists in a city will suffer or how it alters them. Additionally, would our sewer systems suffer in some way too since often storm water is mixed with sewage too?
Like I realize this is likely going to be a very big city-by-city sort of question, just generally curious on the civil engineering questions related to the topics. Like I also know some cities ban rain catchment systems due to the possible risks it adds in reducing supply.
Short answer (from limited, but more than baseline knowledge of these things):
It would be very hard to do this in a way that would impact ecosystems worse than we already do. Capturing the storm-water from roads instead of dumping it would have added benefit of being able to treat it to remove pollution as well. The problem comes down to capacity. Much like trying to power the grid from lightening strikes, storm-water comes in huge unpredictable bursts, and overflowing existing water treatment is a very bad thing.
We could alleviate some of these groundwater problems by building more small, natural dams. Like go to your local creek and build up a small wall of sticks, stones, and leaves. Part of the reason we're in this problem now is ecosystem destruction, resulting in a lot less beavers that used to do this for us. These small dams slow down storm-water's flow out to the ocean, giving local habitats more time to absorb it. Being small and natural, they're more likely to break randomly and not create massive infrastructure dam problems like blocking wildlife. It's the aggregate benefits of having millions of these small blockages spread over all sorts of creeks that helps strengthen groundwater.
Retaining basins and rain barrels also help. My roof is about 2100sq ft. An average rainstorm at my house drops about 500 gallons on that roof. I only have 100 gallons of rain barrels (so far). If I put a retaining basin/artificial pond that could capture this 500+ gallons and let it seep slowly into the earth it would help even more.
Most people don't want these nearby though, as they can result in massive mosquito "problems" in rainy seasons. Mosquitos also provide food for other wildlife, which mitigates the mosquito problems over time, but most people jump to using pesticides, which makes the problem worse.
Was actually just watching a video on the many tiny retaining dams thing and how beneficial it was for a arid environment.
Just some personal experience, I know I did a bit of this as a kid in Appalachia creeks (southwest VA) mostly for harvesting crawdads for fishing but it created so many basins for some really fun wildlife that I've still haven't see anywhere else (frogs, newts, salamanders, shiners) and also cause kids it was fun and we could "swim" in it.
I'm working slowly in building up a similar rain catchment stuff in Pittsburgh and a backyard garden setup and my partner's flower gardens over the next few years and home renovations.
I'm supporting the development of a project that rapidly deploys these types of dams. We're working with Blue Forest Conservation who is constructing false beaver dams to encourage the development of flood plains and riparian zones in areas that have traditionally been ranched or farmland. It's pretty incredible to see the changes in the landscape. The dams they make are supposed to emulate beaver dams, dense and intertwined woody debris. The most recent project we worked on together actually had a wild beaver take over the dam and has now expanded on the original project. Maintenance costs gone!
That's a weird support hand off! but that's awesome though.
Definitely interested in this though if they have anything published. I like watching and learning from another guy that does some prairie restoration stuff too. Definitely awesome when we can try to revert and just end up mimicking nature cause Mother Nature has done it for thousands to millions of years now.
That's awesome, does he have any content you could share?
Blue Forest partnered with the Placer Land Trust for the project. Here is a really high level primer on the project.
https://youtube.com/@NativeHabitatProject
That's the YouTube channel. I don't really have any particular videos in mind just each are an interesting cut to choices made or challenges face, like controlled burns and getting mowed on what should be protected grasslands.
Thanks for the link too! I'll check it out.
Greetings fellow former SWVA kid 👋
I too spent many afternoons and days making small dams with sticks and rocks. Never caught too many crawdads but when I did it felt great! We had several streams in the forest behind my home that fed into a pond on our property. So much fun as a kid but I don't know if I could live life out there again 😅
Replying to my own comment, but the video, I watched - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2tYI7jUdU0
Excellent questions, thank you for asking them. As far as my interest goes, as opposed to what your focused on (cities) I have property in the chiuauan desert where a lot of people live off of catchment. My property is on a wash that has a high percent of bentonite which is basically a powdered clay. So water doesn't soak in very quick and instead runs. I am hoping to do catchment from my roof for household use and reuse of grey water in irrigation, as well as making dammed areas along my wash to promote natural grasses and wildflowers with the eventual goal of planting cottonwood trees which are native to the area. So with the eventual improvement of the soil health, irrigation and proliferation of native plants, would this improve the overall vitality of the water table in my area? Or am I missing something?
I posted a video in another comment before reading this one, but take a look at it. It's probably not the same concept overall, but anywhere the "water runs" during rains, it might be good to build up small dams and just retain it for as long as possible to soak into the ground and eventually it seems like it helps to provide erosion control and big environmental impact from just the actions that one small 100 acres changed.
I was really surprised to see Long Island has an aquifer crisis. I live in NYC, and we're on a completely different water system. It's piped in from lakes upstate. And because climate change is bringing more rainfall to the state, these lakes and reservoirs stay very full.
Long Island could probably have decent success capturing rainfall, but must not have the infrastructure.