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Old_Fart_1948 t1_jdc67ms wrote

Silly question. Wiith all these Wells, driven into the aquifer, Why don't they in times of flood, pump the flood water down into the aquaifer?

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StTriggerHappy t1_jdc7b6l wrote

Aquifers aren't necessarily big underground lakes in a cavern. The water is often spread throughout the substrate kind of like a sponge. When you take the water out, it doesn't just leave empty space, the ground around it fills the void. To reopen and fill those voids would require pressure -which is costly.

There are things called recharge dams which sort of do this though. Problem here again though is cost. Usually other methods are cheaper which is why we don't see that kind of thing very much.

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vtTownie t1_jdcakm5 wrote

Even if you were to recharge an aquifer this way you still run into the treatment issue. The majority of groundwater sources are not treated and if you pump surface water into them they’re now contaminated

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suimaso t1_jdc8xvn wrote

Maybe we could have spent those billions of dollars on that high speed rail project on something like this. We spend money on stupid shit here.

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Arbiter51x t1_jdcqhiy wrote

Putting surface water into an aquifer would be a natural disaster and would actualy contaminate the ground water.

Aquaifer water is naturally purified as water moves down through the ground. You can drink it without treatment. (most of the time).

Now, if we used large, underground caverns to store flood water for future treatment, that would be something. But flood water is full of bacteria, and unfortunately a lot of man made shit like plastic, heavy metals and chemics which can't be easily filter or separated by conventional water treatment.

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