This would make a great cartoon if only I could draw. Sigh.
Picture this. It's a government person sitting in a boat in a pond. He scoops out a bucket of water, then empties it on the other side of the boat. A duck floats by and asks, "What are you doing?" He says, "The pond is going dry, so I'm filling it up."
That's basically what's happening with the duck pond at Wadley Barron Park in Midland, Texas. The local paper has been all over this. Seems that the city is in the process of drilling a couple of water wells near the pond with the stated purpose of refilling the pond to historic levels. The problem is that the pond if merely the visible part of the reservoir that sets the pond water level. So pumping water from the ground nearby simply takes from the same reservoir and puts it back by way of the pond.
Those of us with trees that nourish themselves from the underground water worry that eventually all the local people who are pumping water from that reservoir to dump on their yards will eventually deplete the reservoir and kill our trees. We talked about this a year ago as we worried about the undesirable consequences of too many straws sucking out of the same soda.
But that's life in the desert when people think it's an oasis.
Hey, here's an idea! Much of the water that comes out of our faucets is pumped from lakes several miles away. Those lakes are depleting too, so maybe we could form a bucket brigade. Fill up the buckets from our faucets, then pour it back into the lake. Repeat until full.
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