Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: a water wonk’s Christmas greeting

There’s a tradition in newspaper journalism of the heartwarming front page story on Christmas morn. Here’s mine:

If you could look straight down 538 feet beneath the La Cueva High School neighborhood in Albuquerque’s far Northeast Heights, you would see water returning to the metro area’s depleted aquifer.

The water table in the area had dropped more than 60 feet after decades of pumping to meet the city’s drinking water needs. But, in the past three years, as the metro area’s largest water utility reduced its groundwater pumping and shifted to using river water instead, the water table beneath the La Cueva neighborhood has risen 8 feet.

One Comment

  1. Of interest. Maybe (probably) not the whole story of what’s going on there, but if it’s even half-right it’s pretty encouraging. Of course this sort of thing will only work up to a point. Also, if it does work, why no talk about implementation on a much larger scale?

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