From Richard Collingridge
Ashford, Kent
Fred Pearce seems to be saying that if there is lots of water under the
ground, all we have to do is pump it out and there will be no more shortages
(“Waters still run deep”, 3 August, p 24). But where does this water come
from?
Here in Kent we have several large aquifers—the porous chalk and
sandstone rocks are full of water to great depths—forming a very large
amount of water indeed. But we also have relatively low rainfall and many
boreholes. Already in parts of Kent the amount of water extracted is very close
to the amount reaching the rock from rainfall. It does not take much
arithmetical skill to work out that if the recharge is less than the extraction,
the water table will fall.
Do we want all our rivers and streams to be like the Darent, south of
Dartford, where overextraction is pulling the water table below the porous chalk
river bed and regularly causing it to run dry?
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The truth is that there is not really a water shortage at all. We are just
using too much of it—and if we keep using more, at some point we will
reach the limit of the supply. The answer is to use less, not to extract
more—whether rainfall goes up or goes down.
