Growing American Groundwater Crisis Complex and Hard to Address with Current Tools

The New York Times has written an article discussing its investigation into the groundwater reserves of the United States and how they are shrinking at an unsustainable rate. Reporters found nearly half of all analyzed groundwater sites have declined significantly in size in the last 40 years, with 40% of them hitting historic lows in the last decade.

The cause is a combination of overdrawing water for agricultural and residential purposes, which is only exacerbated due to the impacts of climate change. Extreme groundwater loss can have significant impacts, the most relevant of which is the loss of key sources of drinking water. Additionally, it can result in losing water sources capable of sustaining industrial scale infrastructure and create unstable ground that damages the infrastructure built atop it. However, as the authors note, any approaches to address this crisis are fragmented, as there is no unified authority responsible for addressing sustainable groundwater use. Read more at the New York Times.