Water cycle proves supply is limited

Water. It's essential to all of us. But pollution and limited resources threaten our water supplies, and a confusing web of entities control who gets water and how much. The Herald's exclusive, six-part series examines important water issues facing Franklin County.

As most elementary students who learn about the water cycle in science class will tell you, there's no new water being created, nor is there any being destroyed.

It endlessly circles between the skies and ground -- as snow and rain from clouds onto the surface, where it ends in the earth's snowcaps, rivers and seas, and into and under the ground surface.

However, man's intervention in that cycle puts him between the devil in the details and the deep-blue sea.

According to the paper "Blue Gold," by the International Forum on Globalization, of all the water on Earth, only 2.5 percent is freshwater, and available freshwater represents less than half of 1 percent of the world's total water stock. The rest is seawater, or inaccessible in ice caps, ground water and soil.

"This supply is finite," the publication said.

And the percentage of usable fresh water is falling, as many experts point out. It costs more to make that water usable and, in many cases of contamination, it's impossible to use.

Rex Buchanan, who helped write about the water cycle for a Kansas Geological Survey report on water wells, notes Kansans basically get their water from one of two sources. One source is ground water, or water hidden under the ground in underground rivers and pockets or from water-saturated land next to rivers and streams. The other source is surface water, or rivers and other streams, and lakes.

Ground water doesn't stay underground forever; it evaporates from the soil and is released into the air by plants and grasses.

Surface water evaporates into the air but also is sucked into the ground as it flows along the ground and down streams and into lakes.

The process of water working its way into the ground is called recharge, the Kansas Geological Survey said.

The process of moving water to the surface is called discharge.

However, throughout the world, water is being drawn out of the ground and lakes are being consumed at faster rates than they're being recharged, Maude Barlow, author of "Blue Gold," writes.

At the same time, usable water stocks are being contaminated, making it more expense to purify, or even impossible to use for drinking and cooking, she wrote.

At present rates, some areas of the world -- including the U.S. -- could face scarcity and huge additional expenses as water man can pull from the water cycle diminishes, she wrote.