GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CIRCULAR 402 

WATER AND THE CONSERVATION 

MOVEMENT 

1 

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

FRED A. SEATON, Secretary 

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 

Thomas B. Nolan, Director 

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CIRCULAR 402 

WATER AND THE CONSERVATION MOVEMENT 

By Luna B. Leopold 

Addresses presented at Chautauqua, N. Y., July 9, and 

at San Francisco, Calif., July 12, 1957 

Washington, D. C., 1958 

Free on application to the Geological Survey, Washington 25, D. C. 
, 
1 

WATER AND THE CONSERVATION MOVEMENT 1 

By Luna B. Leopold 

Every age has its unique touchstone, its hallmark. 

The Nineties were thought gay. The Twenties had 

jazz and John Held, Jr. The Thirties had breadlines, 

dust bowls, the forgotten man. And each recent period 

has been studded with so many flashy gems, both paste 

and genuine, that no hallmark would alone be enough 

to label it. 

Of the present age, one of the nameplates will carry 

the word "Conservation." The first time a museum 

visitor walks by that label he will probably stop, push 

back the plexiglas globe of his space helmet and say to 

himself, "I never thought that conservation was a 

keynote of the Fifties." But I imagine he might agree 

as the pathetic truth of that label dawned on his tired 

body, accustomed to canned entertainment, synthetic 

flavors, and fighting the afternoon traffic of the jet 

lanes. I can imagine him musing: "Conservation, 

the hallmark of the Fifties. Somebody about that time 

said about something or other, 'too little and too late.'" 

If our generation is destined to leave that impression 

of our efforts, it will not be for lack of trying. Our 

trouble is, in fact.· that Conservation has been so well 

advertised, so well sold. that it has become a popular 

item; Everybody is wearing one. We Americans are 

going to conserve forests, soil, birds, fish, metals, 

oil, water, coal, wilderness, and several other things. 

In the name of conservation our generation is going to 

build dams and prevent the building of dams; we are 

going to protect the wilderness and develop the wild 

places for mass recreation; we are going to protect 

wildlife, and poison wolves. coyotes and prairie dogs. 

For everything we Americans favor in the name of 

conservation we also favor the antithesis; it all depends 

on whom you ask. 

When discussing conservation we tend to confuse two 

rather different aspects of the use of natural resources. 

The concept of conservation when applied to renewable 

resources. soil, water, and forests for example, might 

mean the use of the resource on a sustained yield basis. 

In other words, use at a rate and under such conditions 

that, on the average, the resource is replaced as fast 

as it is utilized. 

When applied to nonrenewable resources, for 

example, the metals, and oil and coal, conservation 

might be described as orderly development without 

undue waste. 

These simple definitions do not cover all cases but 

for the present discussion I wish to emphasize basic 

issues and ideas, relatively unconfused by distracting 

complications. 

Y Address at Chautauqua. N. Y., July 9, 1957. 

A second idea which I believe must be understood is 

that conservation means different things to different 

people. Conservation has been defined as the greatest 

good for the greatest number. I strongly protest this 

definition. So diverse are the interests of different 

groups it is nearly impossible to decide what is the 

greatest good, or to identify that intangible greatest 

good with any specific group of people who would 

constitute the majority. 

Let me devise an example to clarify this point. 

Imagine a mountain area which is attractive enough to 

be potentially designated a national park, national 

monument or state park. Assume further that the area 

contains a diverse wildlife population and rivers that 

have potential for irrigation storage and hydroelectric 

power development. 

To develop the area for one use precludes certain 

other uses. If the area is made a park, fishing but 

no hunting would be allowed. In some types of park no 

. dam would be allowed for water storage or power 

developmeQt. On the other hand, if a resevoir is built, 

capacity used for storing water for irrigation is not 

available for flood control. Though a reservoir is 

useful for some kinds of recreation opportunities, other 

kinds may be curtailed. 

How do you identify the greatest good among these 

possibilities? One may answer that the greatest good 

is measured by the largest financial return. That 

definition may be partly satisfactory for measuring 

power, irrigation, or perhaps some other uses, but 

long experience has demonstrated that esthetic and 

ethical values cannot be measured in dollars. Every 

time we try it the value so assessed is unrealistically 

low, or else the dollar value is. measuring the wrong 

aspect. 

Take recreation. Is the value of a park measured by 

the gate receipts plus the dollars spent at the hot dog 

concession, plus the gasoline sold at the filling station? 

Obviously this is too small a measure of real value of 

a park, and is a measure only of the least meaningful 

aspects of it. Is the.-value of the fishing measured by 

the dollars spent on tackle, plus boat, plus outing 

clothes, plus gasoline? Everyone knows that the dollar 

cost of a fish taken on a fishing trip is exorbitant. A 

true fisherman does not assess the cost in that way. 

I suggest you try placing a dollar value on that subtle 

thing you feel when you dangle your feet in the lovely 

lake and look across the blue water to the haze on the 

other shore. 

All engineering projects are studied to assure an 

economical design. The benefits over a certain period 

of time must equal the costs. But in many instances 

engineering projects compete with other possible uses 
2 

of the resources, the benefits from which are not so 

simple to estimate. Present practice is to place a 

value on wildlife, on recreation and on other associated 

uses; present practice has also demonstrated that it is 

an unsatisfactory system indeed. Esthetic values cannot be expressed in dollars and I assert that we should 

desist from trying to so assess them. 

This analysis shows that to determine the greatest 

good is difficult indeed. If we could do so, could we 

identify the beneficiaries in order: to assure ourselves 

that we are benefiting the greatest number of people? 

Are the benefits accruing to 50 fishermen to receive the 

same, less, or more weight than the benefits to 50 

businessmen, or to 50 irrigators, or to 50 people in 

need of power or· flood control? I cannot answer that. 

We might remind ourselves that the man who sells 

gasoline to a tourist may also be a fisherman, and he 

may also need both power and flood control. Such an 

analysis indicates to me that each person· or each group 

is for conservation, because he is applying the word to 

the things that interest or benefit him. 

With this general statement in mind let us examine 

the field of water-resource development. All of us 

recognize that we are part of a growing nation, burgeoning with new industries and new babies, and we are 

using water at an unprecedented rate. Therefore all of 

us think that the conservation of water is necessary and 

desirable. Just what would we mean by water conservation? As a prelude to ·an attempt to arfswer that 

question, let me review some hydrologic facts. 

Water is a resource which we call renewable. Though 

water is constantly flowing to the oceans it is being 

replaced ~y rainfall. The amount of water which falls 

each year as precipitation averages about 30 inches 

for continental United States. That is, the water falling annually as precipitation would cover the whole 

area of the country to a depth of about 2t feet. 

Part of this water sinks into the ground and part runs 

off the surface, collects in stream channels and flows 

to the sea. Much of that which sinks into the ground is 

taken up by plants and returned to the atmosphere by 

transpiration through the leaves. Part of the water 

sinks deep enough into the ground to add to the free 

water of the saturated zone. The top of the saturated 

~one is what is called the water table. 

This ground water is seldom stationary, but flows 

slowly under the influence of gravity. Ground water 

tends to reappear sooner or later at the surface, either 

in stream channels or along the margins of the continent in the ocean. To clarify this, did you ever wonder how rivers and streams may continue to flow during 

long periods of no rainfall? The flow in rivers during 

fair weather is water draining slowly out of the ground 

into surface streams. It is very important to keep in 

mind that ground water and surface water are not 

separate and distinct, but closely interrelated, as if 

they were two reservoirs piped together. 

Most of the water which flows in surface streams 

has, in fact, already been infiltrated into the ground, 

and is reappearing in the form of surface flow in the 

river channel. Only during intense storms does overthe-ground flow occur which contributes runoff directly 

to streams without passing through the ground. 

The amount of water that is returned to the atmosphere by direct evaporation and by the transpiration of 

plants is a large percentage of the total which falls. 

Only about one-fourth of the precipitation that falls over 

the country reaches the sea in the form of runoff. If 

three-quarters of the rain which falls does not reach 

the rivers and then the sea, is it wasted? Certainly 

not entirely, for from that three-quarters comes the 

water used to grow forests and agricultural crops-all 

the living green plants which are necessary to maintain 

life and to provide the organic materials we wear, the 

food we eat, the lumber we build with, and other 

organic things which we need and which moderate our 

climate. One can ask how efficiently that threequarters of the total is applied to the production of 

useful biologic products, but I shall not discuss that 

large subject in this brief presentation. 

Let us look at the other one-quarter of the water 

which flows in rivers to the sea. A quarter of the 

precipitated water is not transpired or evaporated to 

the atmosphere and is the portion we draw on for our 

use. It is necessary at the outset to define what we 

mean in the present discussion by "water use. " When 

passing through the turbines of a hydroelectric powerplant water is not altered, diminished, or in any way 

consumed. Therefore we define one type of water use 

as nonconsumptive-a use which does not diminish the 

supply. 

In contrast, consider water used for irrigation. The 

whole purpose is to put water in the soil where plant 

roots can absorb it. Most of the water taken up by a 

plant passes out of the stomata of the leaves into the 

atmosphere as vapor. A small part of the water taken 

up by the plant is used in the photosynthetic process, 

that is, in the manufacture of sugars or, let us say, 

plant tissue. Thus if irrigation is completely efficient, 

all of the water is lost to further use because it is 

returned to the atmosphere. We may say that such 

water is consumed. 

The principal uses of water withdrawn from surface 

streams or from the ground include irrigation and 

municipal and industrial supplies. Irrigation is the 

primary consumptive use of water. By no means all 

of the water diverted-taken out of a stream or pumped 

from the ground-is lost to the atmosphere. There is 

considerable inefficiency in the irrigation process. 

Water seeps into the bed and banks of unlined canals, a 

considerable part sinks down into the ground out of the 

reach of the roots of the irrigated crop, and some is 

evaporated directly to the atmosphere. We will return 

to this matter and consider the quantities involved in a 

moment. 

A principal use of water is for public supplies. By 

no means all of the water withdrawn for public supplies 

is used in the household. Just as you sprinkle your lawn 

with water from the tap, that is, you sprinkle with clean 

or potable water, so also industrial plal].ts use a large 

amount of water from public supplies in their manufacturing processes. These industrial uses include washing, dilution, cooling, steam generation, waste disposal, and some water is used up in the product manufactured. Thus industrial plants use up or consume some 

water, but a relatively small percentage compared to 

irrigation. 
Though a large number of industries buy water from 

public supply systems, and even larger number <;ievelop 

individual supplies either by drilling their own wells 

or by developing surface supplies from lakes or 

rivers. We can, therefore, speak of self-supplied 

industrial use as different from use of public supplies. 

Household uses include cooking, washing, sanitary 

uses, waste disposal in the kitchen sink. The home 

owner also uses some water for irrigation or sprinkling. 

Household uses are like industrial uses-mostly nonconsumptive. The largest part of water used from 

public supplies is returned· to sewers and thence to 

surface streams. 

-Rural uses of water are mostly for domestic purposes and stock watering, and thus are partly 

consumptive. 

Water power is an important use in terms of the 

amount of water passing through turbines but is nonconsumptive in character. Because water power use 

does not involve withdrawal from the river or the 

ground, I am not going to discuss it further here. 

In the United States as a whole, the present water 

use, excluding that for water power, is about 240, 000 

million gallons per day. Remembering that threequarters of the total precipitated water normally returns to the atmosphere, the total available onequarter consists on the average of about 1, 200,000 

mgd. Thus we now use about one gallon out of every 

5 available, but consume only a portion of each gallon 

we use. 

Let us now consider which of the various uses are the 

largest.·!/ Use of water for development of electric 

power is excluded from the data below. 

Public Supplies 

Rural Use 

Irrigation 

Million 

gallons 

per day 

Delivered to farms 81, 000· 

Conveyancelosses 2S,OOO 

Total 

Withdrawn 

(million (percentage} 

gallons 

per day) 

17,000 mgd 7 

3,000 

Total withdrawn 110,000 110,000 46 

Self Supplied 

Industrial 

Appr.oximate total 

110,000 

240,000 ~ 100 

This means that 92 percent of all the water withdrawn for use is made up of irrigation and self -supplied 

industrial uses. These two are ~bout equal in amount. 

One of these two uses, irrigation, is by far the largest 

of all consumptive uses. It is not an efficient use ih 

that only about three gallons out of every four diverted 

are actually delivered to the farm; the other gallon is 

lost in conveyance. That which is delivered to the 

farm is, to a great extent, returned to the atmosphere. 

Part of the water delivered to the farm, as well as 

some lost in conveyance, sinks iQto the ground. Portions 

Y Data adapted from MacKichan, K. A., 1957, 

Estimated Use of Water in the United States, 1955; 

U. S. Geol. Surv. Circular 398. 

may recharge ground-water supplies and some reach 

surface drains and thence stream channels again. It 

must be recognized that water which wets the soil 

particles will eventually be evaporated or transpired, 

and only after the soil is moistened can water percolate downward through the pores or interstices to the 

ground water table. Now transpiration, like any 

evaporative process, leaves the salts or dissotved 

minerals behind. Thus return flow from irrigation, 

that is, the part not transpired to the atmosphere, is 

higher in salts than originally and sometimes cannot 

be used again for irrigation because of the concentration of dissolved material. 

Returning to water withdrawn for other uses, let 

3 

us review what happens to it. Public water supplies 

are to a large extent treated to purify the water. 

Usually this consists of settling or filtration to get rid 

of the particles of foreign material and to oxidize 

organic matter; subsequently nearly all public water 

is chlorinated to kill the remaining germs. Water 

delivered to your house has been treated for your 

protection and this costs money. Yet the amount 

supplied is so large in comparison with the c'ost, that 

we are used to paying but a preposterously small 

charge for what we are getting. We pay on the average about 5 cents per ton of water delivered at our 

kitchen sink. Imagine what we pay for a ton of anything else, coal, gasoline,· food, or structural steel. 

The low cost of water is undoubtedly one of the things 

which made our present standard of living possible, 

for it means that water for cleanliness, health, and 

convenience is av~ilable to nearly everybody. 

After we have ·used the water, it goes down the 

drain into the sewer. Here is where one trouble lies. 

Public water-treatment p~ants serve 115,000,000 

people in the United States, but only part of the 

communities treat the wate.r before discharging it 

back into the rivers. Of 12,000 municipalities having 

sewers, that is, disposing of waste into streams, only 

6, 600 have sewage treatment plants. Municipalities 

with sewers serve a population of 92, 000, 000 personp, 

but sewage treatment plants serve only 56,000, 000~/. 

Thus less than 2/3 of the cities have sewage treatment 

~nd many of the existing plants are inadequate to treat 

all the sewage coming to them. 

Of a sample consisting of 2, 600 industrial plants, 

only 1, 100 or about half are known to have adequate 

plants for treating their waste water. If the untreated 

waste of industry and of municipalities is considered 

together, the amount equals the sew.age waste of a 

population of 150, 000,000 persons~./. 

Considering the averages just discussed one could 

summarize by saying that this country is fortunately 

endowed with large amounts of water of which about 

a quarter of the total is available to draw on for our 

use. On the average we are using only one gallon out 

of every five available and one might suppose, therefore, that there is water a-plenty. Shortages occur 

because of nonuniformity of distribution in time and 

geographically. These characteristics of maldistribution are to be expected from the fact that we live 

on a large c-ontinent at middle latitudes and the continent is varied in topography. 

'Y Data from "Water Pollution in the United States, " 

1951, U. S. Public Health Service. 
4 

The climates in the United States are determined 

principally by the size of the continent and its position 

relative to other continents and the oceans on our earth. 

Large continental masses tend to be hot in the summer 

and cold in the winter, owing to the fact that the ground 

surface can store but small amounts of heat energy. 

By its effect on air masses and general circulation, a 

large land mass influences the path of moisture carried 

inland from the adjoining oceans. Over the United 

States the principal sources of moisture are two. Air 

masses which originate over the Pacific tend to move 

inland from the West Coast.· The second moisture 

source is the Gulf of Mexico, from which air masses 

sweep in a great quarter-circle northward and eastward 

from the Gulf to the Atlantic Seaboard. 

On the West Coast the climate is comparable to that 

of the Mediterranean, with dry summers and maximum 

rainfall in winter. This gradually changes from West 

to East; the central United States is characterized by a 

continental climate of cold winters and hot summers 

and the maximum precipitation in summer. It can be 

seen, therefore, that the size and position of the continent on which we live, as well as the distribution of 

mountains and plains, create nonuniform distribution 

of precipitation in both time and space. This implies 

that at certain seasons of the year water from precipitation is relatively plentiful and at other seasons 

deficient. 

Superimposed on this geographiC and seasonal variation in precipitatiort is a year-to-year variation. Each 

successive year is somewhat different from the lastsome high in rainfall and some low. The areas blessed 

with the largest total tend also to be subject to less 

year-to-year variation. On the other hand, as if semiaridity were not already a sufficient lack of fortune, 

such areas bear the additional burden of the greatest 

variability. Portions of west-central Texas, for 

example, are semi-arid, to say the least, and yet hold 

some world's records for excessive storm precipitation, 

and for flood discharges from drainage areas of partieular size. It can be said, therefore, that a basic element of our water problems is that some areas and 

some periods are water-deficient. 

Geographic characteristics combined with the 

historical sequence of events in our country's development were factors controlling the present pattern of 

water occurrence and water use. In the western half 

of the United States three-quarters or more of the 

total water use is for irrigation. In th~ eastern United 

States three-quarters or more of water is for industry. 

From these same geographic and historical facts 

emerge the water problems of the present day. As 

matters stand now, water immediately available and 

inexpensive to utilize at each indivJ.dual point is already 

put to use. Further expansion of any individual use 

must be balanced by a decrease in some other use or 

some attendant cost. For example, the growth of the 

large metropolitan centers in the West depends on 

increasing supplies of water. In order to get these 

increased quantities either some other use must be 

curtailed, or water must be transported from areas 

of excess to the place where supplies are needed, and 

at costs far in excess of the cost of similar amounts of 

water developed in the past. 

If expanding industry in the East is to have the additional water supplies needed, it will usually be 

necessary to treat that water to improve its quality 

and thus the expense will be much greater than in the 

past when the readily available water was of requisite 

quality. 

So it can be seen that water problems are of three 

basic types. Water may be immediately available but 

may be of improper quality and, therefore, treatment 

is necessary that may or may not make the cost prohibitive. The first. problem is the problem of cost. 

The second type of problem is that associated with a 

physical shortage of water· sufficient for the desired 

uses. This also reduces to a matter of cost ·because to 

increase the supply in an area which is deficient in 

total amount requires either that the money be spent to 

bring water in from elsewhere, or the use itself must 

be moved to the place where water is available. 

The third problem is the legal problem of water 

rights. If a particular use can actually bear the cost 

of developing a new source, or transporting water from 

a great distance, it may be prevented from doing so 

because of the fact that others have the legal right to 

that water. In such an instance the legal owners must 

be paid to relinquish their right. This also, then, reduces to a question of economics, presuming that if 

one can pay a high enough price he can purchase even 

something dear to the present owner. 

I have dealt with these general water problems in a 

most cursory way, and it should be recognized that in 

actual practice there are many ramifications. It is 

nevertheless true, I believe, that poor quality of water, 

physical shortage of water for all uses, and legal rights 

to water all have a common economic base. To the 

man who can pay enough thes~ problems are soluble. 

Whether the price necessary can be justified by the 

benefit received is the issue. The economic justification, however, is partly influenced by what we have 

been accustomed to consider to be the value of water. 

Only now are people beginning to realize that we have 

always obtained water for·bargain prices. We must 

steel ourselves to a new concept of what water really 

is worth. The economy will gradually reflect this 

realization. 

None of the problems cited so far seem to have any 

specific bearing on the idea of conservation of water. 

Let us, therefore, refer back to the definitions of 

conservation mentioned earlier in an attempt to identify water problems which could be called problems of 

water conservation. By one set of definitions, conservation, we said, has two aspects; use on a sustained 

yield basis in the case of renewable resources, and 

orderly development without undue waste in the case 

of nonrenewable resources. 

Are we using water on a sustained yield basis? In 

the broadest sense the total water budget can be affected but little by man. Water is continuously regenerated 

and purified in the natural process called the hydrologic 

cycle. From ocean to· atmosphere, to the land a.nd back 

to the air by evaporation or to the ocean in rivers, 

water moves in a never-ending cycle. As it passes 

within our reach, we use water as we need it. After 

its temporary servic;e it continues its natural course 

in unending circuit. 

But at any given place or in any short period of time 

we can indeed use it faster than it is supplied. In water 
we can draw on storage, gradually depleting it, just as 

in handling money we can draw out of our capital rather 

than live on the interest of our money. What is the 

nature of this storage? The principal example is in 

ground water. An immense amount of water is stored 

in the principal aquifers, or water-bearing formations, 

in the United States. As water is drawn from these 

aquifers it tends to be replaced by infiltration of precipitation, but it is quite possible to pump water out 

faster than recharge is replenishing the storage. Water 

moves slowly underground and the stored supply in 

some places accumulated over a very long time. The 

falling water tables we read about occur as a result of 

pumping faster than the rate of natural replenishment. 

We call this "mining" of ground water. There are many 

places where pumping has caused a serious lowering of 

the water table, but this is by_ no means universal over 

the country. The trouble spots are mostly concentrated 

in California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah, 

southern Arizona and New Mexico, west Texas, and 

southwestern Louisiana. 

Ground water is being mined in these areas because 

currently it is financially profitable to do so. Continued overdraft will sooner or later-and I might add 

quite soon in some places-mean either exhaustion of 

the stored supply, or such an increase in pumping cost 

as the depth to ground water increases that pumping be.-

comes financially unprofitable. In certain areas the 

exhausted aquifer will not become replenished in the 

lifetime of our grandchildren or their grandchildren. 

Mining of ground water is a problem in conservation 

in the truest sense of the word, because it involves the 

principle of exhaustion rather than sustained yield of 

a renewable resource. 

Another aspect of conservation in the water field is 

related to the concept of waste of a limited resource. 

We sometimes hear about the need for conservation of 

that water which is wasted in flowing to the ocean. One 

of the principal uses of surface streams in a civilized 

economy is for the purpose of transporting and diluting 

waste products. We would be quite unrealistic if we 

supposed that water that reaches the ocean in a surface 

stream has been wasted. If there were no water in 

such streams it would be necessary to pump water 

from the ground in order to put water into stream channels, or into pipes, to carry industrial and municipal 

wastes to a disposal area. 

In this light, therefore, it is logical that we should 

dump wastes into rivers, but the problem comes in 

how much waste and in what condition. A great many 

waste products, industrial as well as sanitary, are 

decomposed easily in the presence of oxygen and, after 

such oxidation, become inoffensive as far as odor, 

color, and other normal qualitites are concerned. Some 

bacteria are also destroyed in the oxidation process. 

Most normal surface waters contain a considerable 

amount of dissolved oxygen and when waste is dumped 

into such water the oxidation process begins naturally. 

If there is not an overload, the oxidation goes on to 

completion. When, however, more waste material is 

put into the stream than can be decomposed by the 

available oxygen, it is then that our olfactory and 

visual senses are outraged and hygiene endangered. 

Granting that some water passing to the ocean constitutes a use rather than a waste of water, we may 

5 

ask whether the loss of flood waters to the ocean is a 

waste. Flood waters can be stored and distributed 

over a period of time allowing more utilization of the 

water. To set the stage for an answer to this question 

we ought to know how much water actually passes 

during a flood as compared with normal periods of high 

water and low flow. A flood can be defined as a dis- . 

charge in excess of channel capacity. Flood damage 

results from water flowing over the flood plain at times 

when the discharge is greater than can be contained in 

the normal stream channel. A computation shows that 

on the average the amount of water discharged by a 

river during those periods when the flow exceeds channel capacity, amounts to about 5 percent of the total 

annual flow of the river. Thus it can be seen that the 

proportion of the total water which can actually be 

conserved by storing it during periods of damaging 

flood is relatively small. 

The effect of storage in reservoirs is to iron out the 

irregularities of flow and thus gain control over as 

large a portion of the available water as the reservoir 

capacity will allow. There is .a definite limit, however, 

to the amount of control which can be exercised by 

reservoir storage owing to the fact that the second 

unit of storage provided in a drainage basin gives less 

control than the first unit, the third unit still less and 

so forth, foqowing what is popularly called the law of 

diminishing returns. This can be exemplified by 

considering a sharp-crested hill on which we want to 

develop a flat piece of ground to build a house. Only 

a small amount of dirt removed from the sharp crest 

of the hill will develop a flat area wide enough for a 

one-room cabin. But to widen the area to accommodate 

a two-room.house we must move away and dispose of 

a much larger amount of dirt; to build a three-room 

house even a much greater volume must be moved. To 

develop the absolute maximum possible space requires 

that we move the whole mountain. 

Now the flood has a sharp crest and is triangular in 

form, as is the hill, for it has a rising side and a 

recession side. The peak flow is the top of the triangle. We want to store the peak in a reservoir, and the 

amount of storage is comparable to the amount of dirt 

removed from the mountain. To eliminate the flood 

entirely we must store all of it, just as we had to move 

the whole mountain. To gain each successive increment of control of flood water requires a larger volume 

of storage. The same principle applies to carrying 

over water from a year of ample streamflow to furnish 

water during a dry series of years. Every increment 

of control costs more than the preceding one. 

How much of the maximum possible control of water 

have we gained by the reservoirs already built in the 

United States? In th.e Southwest the available reservoir 

storage is well along toward a large percentage of 

possible control, owing to the fact that reservoir 

storage has been justified by irrigation. In eastern 

United States the reservoir storage is, on the whole, 

so small that only a minor part of possible control is 

being exercised. However, the East is so blessed with 

relatively high and unifor-n precipitation that to date 

only a small amount of control has been necessary. 

The future will no doubt see development of a larger 

percent of control as water needs continue to expand. 

Loss of flood waters to the ocean, then, is not the 

same kind of problem as mining of ground water 
6 

because failure to develop a resource is not waste. 

Dev~lopment will come naturally when the need arises 

and development costs can be justified by the benefits. 

This, then, is another problem of economics. 

Stream pollution has been called a problem of conservation. Most individuals know that pollution exists, 

but the problem is somewhat abstract, or at least distant from his daily life. The ordinary citizen is usually 

notacquainted'with the practices even of his own city. 

We abhor the idea of insufficient sewage-treatment plant 

capacity to treat the wastes from American cities, but 

passively condone the existence of inadequate treatment 

of sewage from the city in which we live. Water treatment costs money and, as in the case of mo.st other 

water problems, .the root of our difficulties is what we 

are willing to pay for, and how much. I think you will 

agree that the figures are deplorable and even astonishing. Let me repeat them. In the United States the untreated waste of industries and cities is equivalent to 

the untreated sewage of a population of 150, 000, 000 

persons. It is probable, therefore, that among us here 

not one person in ten lives in a city which treats all of 

its municipal and industrial. waste. 

Pollution, then, involves both the economic and the 

esthetic or ethical aspects we have mentioned. The 

technology is readily available to eliminate the pollution problem. When we consider the intangible niceties 

of having clean streams, we are placing an esthetic or 

ethical value on the resource. However,- to gain the 

esthetic advantage requires money, and as a whole, the 

American publi~ has been willing only to foot the bill 

for some control of pollution but by no means for a 

complete job. Yet progress has been made and the outlook is heartening. Treatment of wastes, after all, is 

justified as both a public health measure· and as an esthetic measure. Public health is a field in which we are 

willing to spend money though the benefits cannot be 

measured in dollars and cents. 

I have attempted to analyze a few broad problems in 

the field of water resources as they bear on the conservation movement. Conser:vation as a concept is based 

essentially on the desire to provide for our grandchildren some values which we enjoy but which can be 

destroyed. Looking toward the preservation of these 

values, the conservation movement has resulted in the 

recognition of two lines of action-sustain the yield of 

renewable resources, and develop in an orderly manner 

without undue waste, the nonrenewable ones. Both of 

these courses of action are based in part on esthetic, 

ethical, or at least nonpecuniary considerationssocial rather than economic values, if you will. 

Our vicariousness prompts us to invest esthetic and 

ethical value with special merit or consideration, and 

we label these things with special names. In this instance we give special consideration to causes or to 

actions which can be labeled "conservation practices." 

We are, therefore, likely to have many quite different 

causes or actions presented to us as conservation when 

in fact they are quite antithetical to conservation. These 

tend to ride the coattail of a popular movement. I 

suggest that we examine more critically issues and 

practices which are called conservation and reserve 

our special consideration for those ethical and esthetic 

values which cannot compete in a strictly economic 

world where everything must have dollar value. We 

must be willing to stand up and assert that there are 

some things which we as a nation want, but which in 

purely economic terms would be described as valueless or sheer luxury. To preserve such values it may 

be necessary to decide a-priori that we want them and 

assign to them high priority without attempting to put 

a price tag on the benefit received. If we want a particular canyon, a rare species of bird, or a particular 

valley preserved because of its scenic beauty when 

threatened by some other use, strictly economic 

comparisons will seldom result in its preservation. 

The reason for this is that we have not found, and in 

my opinion we should stop looking for, ways of placing 

dollar values on scenery, on recreation, and on that 

intangible mental well-being which we associate with 

beauty. In this sense I think there is a real need for 

conservation in the field of water. Clear streams 

which are natural in their settings, nice to look at and 

pretty to fish in, have a certain esthetic value which 

defies the dollar. Some of these at least must be conserved if we are to leave to our sons and daughters 

what this country naturally provided to us and to our 

forefathers. 

With this very important exception, I believe that 

the word conservation is being misused in the field of 

water today. All our other water problems are 

problems of shortage due to geographic and time variations, which, important as they are, can be reduced 

to problems of economics. Economic problems gradually become solved by the play of forces inherent in 

the market place. Water will be used in those places 

and for those purposes which can best afford to !;lear 

the cost under prevailing conditions. 

Let us, therefore, cease to confuse the basic meaning of conservation with problems which are strictly 

economic. Those of us who are interested in conservation values as I have defined them see a real need 

for conservation in the field of water, but if we continue 

along our present course, trying to place dollar values 

on sunsets and canyons, there will soon enough be little 

of the best left to conserve. 

•· 
THE NATURE OF OUR WATER PROBLEMS"4 

In south-central Wisconsin my family has a weekend 

retreat which we call The Shack. It consists of a couple 

of hundred acres of marsh, prairie, and swampwoods, 

no good for farming, but replete with a valuable commodity-solitude. 

The Shack sits on a sandy terrace about 300 yards 

from the Wisconsin River. When we bought the place 

there was no water supply, so we drilled a hole about 

10 feet deep, put down a pipe fitted with a well point, 

attached an old fashioned handle-type pump, and we 

were all fixed. To get a drink you just pump the 

handle a few times. 

But we also hand-planted native wild flowers and 

some thousands of pine seedlings because we wanted 

our land to bear a sample of the original vetetation of 

the area. l)o1ring dry summers hand-carried pails of 

water went from our little pump to water the nearest 

trees, but a water pail was hardly adequate for a complete job. As a result we lost a good many trees over 

a period of years. 

The nearby river is quite unfit to drink but we swim 

in it nevertheless. The fun of swimming in your birthday suit quite outweighs the fears of getting a mouthful 

of germs. 

Now it is immediately evident that we have no physical shortage of water at The Shack, but this does not 

prevent us from experiencing water problems. First 

consider the pump. There is an adequate supply of 

good quality water right at the door. To develop this 

supply ·for drinking purposes required a small expenditure which was obviously justified. • But because of our 

agricultural pursuits we needed water over and above 

that for drinking. The technology was available in the 

form of a modern gasoline motor to pump water either 

from our shallow well, or from the river, to irrigate 

our crop. We chose not to avail ourselves of the 

gasoline-driven product of modern civilization. We 

preferred solitude to a put-put, and so would not put a 

motor near The Shack. To pump from the river at a 

distance from The Shack would be too expens~ve. 

We had another problem. The river water is of inadequate quality for general purposes and marginal for 

the specialized need inherent in our operation-that is, 

for swimming. Therefore, we get along, but are somewhat less than fully satisfied with our situation. 

This backwoods layout has most of the elements of 

modern water problems. Counterparts can be found 

in the operation of a farm, a home, a city, an industry, 

a State, and the United States as a whole. It is my 

purpose here to review first the general nature of 

these problems and then to analyze how the various 

elements comprise the problems of State and of Nation. 

First is the question of total available supply; physical shortage of water in a particular area constitutes 

!/ Address before American Association of Newspaper 

Editors, San Francisco, Calif., July 12, 1957. 

one general type of problem. As I will demonstrate, 

most areas are in the same position as The Shack-no 

general physical shortage. However, variations from 

year to year and season to season may cause difficulties. 

A second principal problem is that of water quality. 

The available water may be of such quality that it would 

be satisfactory for some purposes but not for all desired 

purposes. We will swim in the river but would not 

drink of it. 

A third principal kind of problem is economic. Even 

if water of satisfactory quality is available, the desired 

use may not justify the cost of developing the supply. 

We do not consider the cost of pumping from the river 

to our trees to be worth the tariff. 

Different persons would make quite different categories to describe water problems, but for present purposes I believe one can say that the three types of 

problems just listed are general ones. There may be 

consequent or correlative problems. Water development, though economically justified, may compete with 

other uses of the area. 

Attempts to resolve conflicts equitably has created 

other problems which are legal in nature. The physically available water may, in certain circumstances, 

be appropriated-that is, legally owned by another 

party. As riparian owners in a Midwestern State we 

had no legal problem at Th~ Shack. The correlative 

problems may also involve balancing of economic 

against esthetic values. At c;mr shack water development 

by gasoline pump competed with a major recreational 

use--solitude. The counterpart of this conflict is well 

known in cases where water development by a large dam 

would compete with maintenance of an area for its 

scenic and wilderness value. 

This then is the structure of our water problems. 

The scheme of my furth~r analysis will be to discuss 

how these general problems appear in actual practice, 

first in the Nation as a whole and then in a few localities 

as examples. 

To begin, we must consider the magnitude of our 

total supply of water and its relation to present needs. 

The United States as a whole receives an average of 

about 30 inches of precipitation annually; that is, the 

annual fall would cover the whole country to a uniform 

depth of some 2t feet. About 3/4 of the total precipitated water is returned to the atmosphere by evaporation 

and transpiration. The remaining 1/4 constitutes the 

water available for withdrawal use; if expressed as 

an average yield it would amount to 1, 200,000 million 

gallons per day. To make this easier to visualize it 

can be expressed as 7, 500 gallons per capita per day. 

This amount is about what would be contained in a cubical box 10 feet on a side. This figure is cited as a base 

for comparison with present water use in the United 

States 

In the following discussion of water use I will deal 

with water which is withdrawn from surface streams or 

7 
8 

from the ground and not with water used to develop 

electric power. 

The principal uses of water are irrigation, industrial 

supply, and municipal use. Indus tries developing their 

own supply rather than buying water from a city make 

up 46 percent of the total water use in the United States. 

Approximately an equal amount, or 46 percent, is used 

for irrigation. Water use for public supplies constitutes 7 percent of the total, and rural use 1 percent. 

Irrigation is the principal consumptive use of water. 

Public water supply use and industrial use are only 

partly consumptive. 

We can summarize the total picture of water availability and water use by saying that, at the present time, 

Americans are using only one gallon out of every five 

available. Of each gallon now being used, only 7 percent is used for public-water supplies. The remaining 

use is divided equally between irrigation and industry. . 

We can say, therefore, that there is no over-all shortage of water in this country. 

However, water aplenty does not prevent us from 

having serious local problems. These local problems 

result from the uneven geographic distribution of water 

over the country, as might be surmised from the regional distribution of precipitation. Similar types of problems arise from the season-to-season and year-toyear variation of precipitation in any given area and the 

more or less fortuitous occurrence of series of dry 

years. 

Let us now view the second principal problem-water 

quality-as it applies to the United States as a whole. 

Water shortage can develop wherever the available supply is not of requisite quality when the use intended does 

not justify treatment to improve its quality. All waters 

contain dissolved salts, in variable amounts. All uses 

of water have a limiting amount of salt that is tolerable 

but there are particular limits on the kinds permissible. 

Irrigation demands water low in sodium and boron, 

municipal, low in hardness, and industry has many 

special requirements. Besides the natural load of salt, 

man uses water as a vehicle to transport wastes. Despite the heartening growth in the number of industries 

that are treating their waste water and the number of 

·communities constructing adequate sewage treatment 

plants, in general we have been polluting the surface 

waters of this country at an increasing rate. Although 

carrying wastes is itself a necessary use of water, an 

excessive load of wastes impairs the further use of 

water. To this extent waste treatment can be considered water reclamation. 

Before elaborating on the nature of local water shortages, let us consider the problem of economics which 

Ne listed as a ·third principal problem. At the present 

time the average cost for water is about 5 cents per ton 

delivered at the tap. Because of the over-all abundance 

of water in our count.ry we have grown accustomed to the 

idea that water is a commodity as free as air. At 5 

cents a ton one might say this is practically true. It is 

literally correct to say that water is "cheap as dirt, " 

because you could not get dirt delivered at your doorstep 

for 10 times that price. 

With rising demands for water it can be expected that 

the price of water must increase as the economic 

competition for available water becomes keener and as 

more expensive sources become developed. 

Even with the price as low as it is, cost alone may 

make water a limiting factor for a particular use. 

Many irrigation farmers in the Southwest are growing 

cotton with water developed by pumping from an aquifer. As irrigation from ground water spreads in an 

individual area, at least in dry years, there is often a 

tendency to pump water from the aquifer at a· rate 

greater than it is being replaced by infiltrated precipitation on the recharge area. During suchperiods the 

ground-water table will drop. The cost of electric 

energy becomes a principal item in the production of a 

crop, exceeding the amortization of the capital invested 

in the development and installation of the· well and 

pump. The lowering of the ground-water table under 

the conditions outlined will increase the cost of pumping, and this increase may proceed to a point where the 

economic returns from the sale of the crop will no 

longer pay for the electric power necessary. Und-rr 

such circumstances a water shortage can be said to 

have developed-an economic shortage rather than a 

physical one. 

As another general type of example one might point 

to the fact that in an area of limited water supply a 

larger profit may be realized by using· the available 

water for one use rather than for another. For example, 

a larger return may be realized from an industrial use 

rather than for applying the same amount of water to 

irrigation. A recent study published by a prominent 

consulting engineer, Shepard Powell, claims that for 

the United States as a whole, a unit quantity of water 

produces more than one hundred times the economic 

return when used by indus try than when used for irrigation. ~ Considering that industry can pay more 

for .water than can irrigation projects, as the West 

develops further one may expect to see a gradual shift 

of water use in the semiarid areas from irrigation toward industrial use. Such a shift could be expected as 

a natural result of the play of economic factors in an 

area where such a difference in return obtains. 

Tightly woven in the fabric of the three kinds of water 

problems I have outlined is resolution of conflicts among 

contending demands and uses. Law is the social vehicle 

for adjusting uses equitably: Law is itself not a water 

problem but a consequence of those problems. 

We find, almost without exception, that where waterresource development is seriously handicapped by legal 

restriction either technology or knowledge of actual 

conditions is inadequate. Inasmuch as our legal bases 

were laid many years ago, it is really to the credit of 

our courts and legislatures that we do as well as we do. 

For example, many laws and decisions have employed 

such terms as "diffuse surface waters," "underground 

rivers, " and similar terms which either exist only 

rarely in nature, or which so poorly describe the conditions existing in nature that the terms are subject to 

equivocal or antithetical definitions. Nonetheless, these 

terms were the best available at one time to define equities in a complex situation. However, today we have 

the problem of writing codes for the administration of 

the use of ground water and I know of no more difficult 

task in the water-resource development field. 

_3./ Powell, Shepard, 1956, Relative economic returns from industrial and agricultural water uses: 

Jour. Am. WaterWorks Assoc., v. 48, ~o. 8;p. 991-992. 
Another complication to the legal problem is the different concept underlying the laws in the western as 

compared with the eastern States in this country. Eastern law is generally based on the idea of riparian right; 

that is, that the right to water belongs to the person 

whose property abuts the river channel or lake shore. 

In many States the riparian owner is free to use the 

water of a surface stream, provided he returns the 

water to the stream undiminished in quality or quantity. 

Owing to the importance of irrigation in the development of the West, western water law is based on the 

concept of prior appropriation; that is, the right to 

water depends on the application of a given quantity to 

beneficial use and the priority of the right is determined 

by the priority in time of such beneficial use. 

Over much of the West there is more good land to be 

irrigated than can be supplied with water. The result 

has been the total appropriation of the streamflow. 

Economic conditions have been such that land has been 

brought into production which cannot be adequately supplied with water even during years of normal rainfall. 

During droughts of long duration, no water can be supplied those lands because all of the water available is 

used by senior appropriations. 

I believe the problems arising from legal issues are 

generally reducible to economic or political terms. 

Landowners with an inadequate supply will attempt to 

secure supplemental water through storage or transbasin diversion at their own or public expense. Where 

there is conflict between types of use, there will be a 

tendency for uses yielding the highest financial returns 

to acquire water ·rights from -others of lesser value. 

Such actions are sometimes limited by State law, which 

has certain disadvantages. There is no way, for example, to insure that the best and most productive 

lands are favored to secure the greatest return from 

the use of the water resource. 

Let me illustrate now each of the three general probl~ms, quantity, quality, and costs, by particular local 

examples, pointing out as I do so that these few examples cannot adequately represent the variety of local 

problems which exist. As the examples show, the 

three kinds of problem are present in each, differing 

only in emphasis. 

In the High Plains region of New Mexico and Texas 

supplies of surface water are generally inadequate for 

irrigation and the scanty supplies would be prohibitively 

expensive to develop. In this area ground water has 

been used for irrigation since the early 1900's and 

water levels have declined continuously in response 

to pumping from the major aquifer or ground-water 

storage reservoir, the geologic formation known as the 

Ogallala formation. Over a large area there is a specific limit to the amount of water stored in this bed and 

the replenishment of ground water from precipitation is 

much smaller than the depletion due to pumping. It has 

been estimated that at the present rate of decline of 

water levels in several counties in west Texas, the 

Ogallala formation will be pumped essentially dry in 30 

to 60 years, the exact number of years depending upon 

climatic cycles, farm economy, and water-use practices. Though the physical shortage is not yet immediate, it is not far off, and owing to the meager surface 

supplies, the area will probably be forced at that time 

to change the pattern of water use to meet the dwindling 

supply. 

9 

As an example of economic stress as a result of 

continuing development, the situation in the Chicago 

area may .be cited. Many industrial wells tap artesian 

sandstone aquifers from 800 to 2, 200 feet below the 

surface. The water in these aquifers originally was 

under sufficient pressure to flow at the surface but, 

as a result bf heavy pumping, the levels have declined 

hundreds of feet. However, the aquifer has not been 

dewatered, so that there is no danger of failure of the 

supply. 

In order to utilize this water, however, wells have 

had to be deepened and pumps lowered. As a result, the 

cost of obtaining the water has increased to the point 

that many users have begun to buy water from the municipal supplies which are obtained from Lake Michigan. 

Water quality is the limiting factor in many places 

where water is withdrawn from a surface stream, 

returned to the river, and withdrawn again at a downstream point for reuse. Along the Neosho River in 

Kansas, 12 cities use and reuse the water. Detergents, 

so prevalent in home sinks and laundries today, are 

not eliminated in usual municipal water-treatment 

plants and thus tend to accumulate during reuse. 

Detergents became so concentrated at times in Neosho 

River water that suds were formed when water was 

obtained at.a faucet. Several times during 1953-54 

the total flow in the river at each city waterworks did, 

not exceed the sewage flow from the city upstream. V 

A local example of water conflict concerns the use 

of ground water in Harvey and McPherson Counties, 

Kansas. An excellent sand and gravel aquifer there 

contains a. large amount of water equal to about st 

times as much as all the surface impoundments in the 

State. The natural decline of the water table during 

the recent drought, even without pumping, has been as 

much as 10 feet. The city of Wichita develops water 

from this aquifer and planned to drill some additional 

wells. Suits against the city were filed by local farmers who feared that the additional development would 

impair their supply. These actions have delayed the 

city's work and for~ed severe rationing during the 

summer months. !it 

A regional example of a water-right problem is the 

conflict among Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado over 

the waters of the Rio Grande. The Rio Grande Compact, ratified by Congress in May of 1939, was presumed to be a means by which Colorado and New Mexico 

could construct storage reservoirs needed for additional irrigation development and flood control, and operate 

them without injury to the prior developments under 

the Elephant Butte Dam in southern New Mexico and 

west Texas. 

Under the compact, storage of water in any reservoir in Colorado and New Mexico built after 1929 was 

to be regulated in accordance with a system of debits 

and credits. This system was adopted to meet the 

variability of runoff of the Rio Grande by providing 

for the accumulation of debits by Colorado and New 

Mexico, limited to a fixed amount, in years of low 

§.../Data from Metzler, D. F., 1956, Recommended 

action against effects of severe droughts in Kansas: 

Jour. Am. Water Works Assoc., v. 48 No. 8, 

p. 999-1004. 
10 

runoff. A means was provided by which accumulated 

debit_s could be erased during periods of high runoff. 

For several reasons the accumulated debits of Colorado and New Mexico have exceeded the allowable 

amount after a drought of almost 15 years' duration. 

Thus, any storage in Platoro Reservoir in Colorado 

and all in El Vado Reservoir in New Mexico, except 

that to provide for Indian rights, -is subject to the demands of the lower States. The deficiency has become 

so great, however, that the compact commissioners 

have decided to restudy the whole question of water 

availability. The State of Texas, which being lowest on 

the river is subject to the greatest shortage of water, 

is attempting to bring the whole question before the 

Federal courts. 

Any review of problems in a field of endeavor invites 

some discussion of solutions to the problems posed. 

My analysis of the nature of problems in the water field 

is designed to demonstrate what I believe to be a truth, 

that general solutions are not possible. There has been 

much written about the water shortage, the water crisis, 

and the fremendously expanding need for water. There 

is no denying that in many places there is such a shortage of water that the situation is, or approaches, a 

crisis. There is no denying that we have seen in the 

last decade an unprecedented demand for water. 

Listed among the possible solutions to the water 

situation are two which have been given much publicityincreasing the total supply by cloud innoculation-that 

is, by inducing increased precipit~tion; second, the 

conversion of saline water. These I wish to place in 

proper perspective without deprecating at all the possibilities ~hich they offer. 

Cloud seeding has been demonstrated to produce 

slight increases in the precipitation from seeded storms 

under restricted conditions-specifically under conditions where air masses are naturally lifted by mountains. New technology resulting from research will, 

it is hoped, increase the effectiveness of the technique. 

Even modest increases in rainfall can be a big boon to 

a city or farmers beset by drought. However, it is 

agreed by all scientists in this field that under conditions of drought, weather situations giving rise to 

seedable clouds are abnormally infrequent, and cloud 

seeding cannot be viewed as capable of breaking a 

drought or bringing drought relief. Viewed against the 

fact that in the United States as a whole we are now 

using only one gallon of water out of every 5 available, 

increasing precipitation does not appear to me to be the 

kind of solution which fits the nature of the problem at 

hand. 

Conversion of sea water is in somewhat a different 

position. Relatively well-developed technology is 

available to convert saline waters to fresh by any one 

of several different processes. The principal reason 

why conversion is not being widely practiced now is a 

matter of cost. As the demand for water increases, as 

it may be expected to do with our increasing population 

and industry, ventures of different kinds will be forced 

to spend more money for the required water than is 

necessary now. With increasing costs of water, processes which cannot now compete will become financially 

practical and under those conditions saline-water conversion will be a usable and practical answer to many 

a local situation. 

Rather than look for overall solutions or panaceas 

for the water situation, I believe it is necessary to 

understand the nature of the forces operating in creating the problems which exist. If there were a better 

understanding on the part of a larger segment of our 

population as to the factors which lead to water crises, 

we should be able to avoid many problems before they 

become critical and would be able to act more surely 

when they do. I propose, then, to comment on some of 

these forces and trends in lieu of discussing specific 

kinds of solutions. 

Let us consider what we mean by a water shortage. 

I have mentioned that a water shortage may result from 

a real physical lack of water, may be in reality an economic shortage resulting from lack of the financial 

return necessary to develop existing supplies, or may 

be the result of inadequate quality of the available water. 

Who knows there is a shortage when it exists? A shortage does not really count until the man in the street 

goes into his house, turns on the tap and no water 

flows out. At that moment there is a water shortage in 

all reality. The telephones begin to ring and the wheels 

of public opinion begin to close the vise called public -

pressure. 

Therefore we may ask, why did not the water flow 

out of the tap. In many an instance it is because the 

peak load cannot be met by the water distribution system. The mains are too small or for some other technical reason the pressure cannot be maintained under 

the conditions of peak demand. During a long dry 

period in a summer when everyone comes home from 

the office hot and tired, each person turns on his garden hose t-o irrigate his flower garden, flips on the air 

conditioner, andsteps into the shower. When enough 

persons do this simultaneously the pressure drops and 

no water flows to those who are on a slight hill or to 

those most distant from the reservoir or pumping 

station. 

This situation arises in many a city. ~ationing, 

curtailment of lawn sprinkling, and other measures to 

spread out the load are usually designed to maintain 

adequate pressure in the mains. All of these things 

may happen even when there is plenty of water in the 

reservoir. 

A city council may have foreseen such a situationfor 

several years and tried to promote a bond issue to 

expand the facilities, but as long as water flows from 

the tap the ordinary citizen has no personal reason for 

backing the measure. Thus water shortages and water 

crises are often the result of lag time between increasing demand and the required engineering work. Physical 

limitation in the distribution of available water is not 

necessarily the cause of water shortages. 

This leads into the second comment I wish to make. 

Changing trends in water demand, and thus in water 

use, will tend to lead to development of water from 

existing or from new sources as economic forces make 

such development financially feasible. As in any other 

field of action, early developments tend to be cheaper 

than later ones because the most economical source is 

always the first to be tapped. Boston got along with 

local wells until after years of inconvenience, recurrent 

epidemics, and general dissatisfaction, the public 

• 
• 

" 

became willing to pay the cost of a long aqueduct. This 

pattern has been experienced in city after city. 

Similarly, when an industry finds that available 

sources of water are either insufficient or uneconomical, and the profits will, over a period, pay the cost 

of water development, an alternative scheme for water 

supply is found. This may take the form of developing 

an individual water supply, paying a higher price for 

water from an outside supplier, or a shift in plant operation to reuse the water available and thus reduce the 

total water requirement. 

As pointed out earlier, the total supply of water in 

the United States is large and many of the proble!lls 

stem from maldistribution in space or time. For the 

most part, water exists and can be obtained when the 

users are able to bear the cost. In the case of Los 

Angeles, a source was miles away and separated by a 

desert, but when the cost was considered justifiable, 

the water was obtained. 

We must steel ourselves to the idea that further water 

development cannot be achieved at the price of five cents 

per ton to which we have grown accustomed in the past. 

The next concept which I believe deserves discussion 

as a background for understanding our present situation 

is the following: Water control by storage follows a 

law of diminishing returns and, furthermore, has a 

specific physical limit. When people speak of conserving water, one aspect which is often alluded to is that of 

the waste of water flowing uncontrolled to the ocean. It 

is necessary to say first that water flow~ng to the ocean 

in surface streams must serve the important purpose 

of carrying off and diluting salts and wastes. If we 

were to control water so stringently that surface 

streams in an area were either to dry up or to be reduced to too low a flow, we would then be forced to 

supply water to some surface channels, either natural 

or artificial, to dilute and dispose of wastes. 

As far as the flood-flows that pass to the ocean uncontrolled and therefore was ted are concerned, it is 

desirable to note the amount of water involved. I speak 

now of damage-producing flood waters, that is, water 

which passes through a segment of valley at discharge 

rates in excess of channel capacity. Such overbank 

flows are the ones that cause flood damage. 

On the average, the water that is discharged at rates 

in excess of channel capacity constitute about five percent of the total annual discharge of the basin. In other 

words, the amount of such flood waters is not large. 

A small reservoir may be able to store enough water 

to satisfy demands during a month of dry weather. A 

larger reservoir may store enough to supply even as 

much as a year of deficient flow. A still larger one, 

two successive years, and so forth. 

Now, one of the characteristics of streamflow as well 

as of weather is the occurrence of relatively long periods of subnormal water supply alternating with periods 

of above-average supply. Our analysis shows that with 

a fluctuating resource, storage capable of delivering 

the water indefinitely at a rate equal to the average flow 

is impossible to obtain short of an omniscient view of 

the future. 

11 

Each successive increment of control desired takes 

a larger amount of reservoir storage space than the 

preceding increment. This may be illustrated by visualizing the building of a pyramid. To build a pyramid 

20 feet high takes much more than twice as much stone 

as it would to build a similar structure only 10 feet 

high. 

A flood wave is triangular in shape, like the profile 

of a pyramid. It has a rising side, a peak, and a falling 

side. To store enough water to reduce the peak by one 

half requires much less than half the reservoir capacity 

necessary to store the whole flood flow. Thus, water 

control by reservoir storage follows ·a law of diminishing returns; it takes larger and larger amounts of storage to obtain each successive increment of control. 

Furthermore, there is another kind of limit inherent 

in water control by reservoir storage. As more and 

larger reservoirs are built the area of open water surface exposed to evaporation increases. Long before a 

hopeful complete control is exercised, water losses by 

evaporation may equal the additional water gained by 

the additional reservoir space. 

Our analyses of our national inventory of major reservoirs enable us to report on the present degree of 

control effected by the existing storage development; 

including that part, generally less than 20 percent of 

the total flow is naturally regulated by ground-water 

storage. Expressing the degree of control by the percentage of the total,flow that is available for use, we 

find that in the Cumberland-Tennessee basins, the existing reservoirs provide a control equal to 50 percent 

of the total flow. In the Ohio basin, excluding the 

Cumberland-Tennessee basins, control equals 25 percent. In the Colorado River basin, a large amount, 

85 percent control, has already been attained, as would 

be expected from the large irrigation developments. 

For the United Stat's as a whole, the percentage is 

about 35 percent. 'l The Colorado River basin already 

has reservoir storage built to a degree that approaches 

the optimum where evaporation losses will eat up any 

additional water conserved by providing added reservoir 

storage. 

Thus, in the United States as a whole a considerable 

increase in water can be obtained for use by reservoir 

development, but places in the West are already approaching the limit. 

A third concept I wish to discuss as background to 

understanding our water problems is the overdraft of 

aquifers, and the mining of ground water. As I mentioned previously, an aquifer is a porous bed or zone 

underground capable of absorbing and transmitting 

water. Ground water is generally in motion under the 

influence of gravity, moving toward areas of lower 

elevation or pressure. Recharge is the replenishment 

of water which is pumped out or moves out naturally 

from an aquifer. This replenishment comes from precipitation that falls on surface areas connected with the 

porous bed. 

7 

_ _/ Data from W. B. Langbein, personal communication. 
12 

The amount of water stored in some underground 

reservoirs is tremendous. For example, in the Sacramento Valley alone just northeast of where we stand 

today, the storage capacity between depth of 20 and 200 

feet is estimated at 34 million acre-feet, a volume 

equivalent to about one and one-fourth times the capacity of Lake Meade.'§_/ 

Just as in a surface reservoir, it is perfectly feasible 

to draw on stored water during periods of drought, with 

a consequent lowering of t}:le water table just as similar 

drawing on storage would lower the level of a lake or 

surface reservoir. The falling water tables we hear 

about are not unexpected during periods of low recharge, 

and during wet years the storage tends to be replenished. 

However, the problem of lowering water tables is 

indeed serious where continued pumpage is known to 

exceed the average recharge. Under those circumstances, we are mining the stored ground water. Continuation of such overdraft in an area will have one of 

two effects: Either to lower the water table to the limit 

of economic lift, that is, to a point where the cost of 

pumping exceeds the revenue obtained from use of the 

water, or the stored water will become physically 

exhausted. 

'I'he--e$ample of the High Plains mentioned previously 

is only one place where the draft on ground water is in 

excess of the average recharge. Ground-water mining 

is particularly pre~alent in the southern parts of the 

southwestern States, southern California, Arizona, 

New Mexico, and Texas. 

Generally speaking, irrigation, and pumping at certain military installations, are the uses contributing 

particularly to ground-water mining. The recent 

blossoming of homesites and vacation places in the 

Mojave Desert will surely mean drawing on stored 

ground water in excess of recharge. 

!!_/Poland, J. F., and others, 1949, Ground-water 

storage capacity of the Sacramento Valley, Calif.: 

U. S. Geol. Survey. Open-file report. 

In many places, it is known by the water users that 

pumping exceeds the long-term average recharge, but 

as long as pumping is economically profitable, there 

is no reason to believe that anyone intends to curtail 

pumping, despite the fact that sooner or later the area 

will have to be abandoned for present purposes. 

This leads to my final comment on the water situation. 

In many areas, it is not known by the water users or 

anyone else whether or not present pumping exceeds the 

rate of recharge. Ground-water studies require special 

skills combining both geological and hydraulic techniques, 

and these studies are time consuming. 

Development has proceeded much faster than scientific studies and accumulation of data concerning the 

amount, occurrence, and characte1 istics of our water 

resources. Such studies are carried on principally by 

the Geological Survey in collaboration with States and 

with local governmental bodies. 

Present water problems are sufficiently complex that 

new technical knowledge and additional data are essential. But such knowledge in the hands only of the specialists is not the full requirement. The public at large 

must become better acquainted with the general principles of water occurrence in order that decisions may 

be based on sound physical principles and fact, rather 

than on hearsay and various forms of witchcraft which 

always persist in the vacuum of insufficient knowledge. 

The scientists in the water field as well as in other 

disciplines, have an obligation to the public and to the 

press which, in my opinion, they have not satisfactorily discharged. I am sure that the press is desirous 

of publishing fact rather than fancy, if the scientist 

provides it with usable and understandable information. 

I hope that the present expanding recognition of this 

responsibility which I think I perceive in scientific 

circles, will lead to the development of a closer working relationship between the press, the scientist, and 

the publi~. 

INT.-DUP. SIC., lASH .. D.C. 30386 

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