Use and availability of ground-water

Abstract

Every man has to consume a certain quatity of water every day. This use constitutes the most basic need for water. In households water is also used for basic hygiene, washing, cleaning, and for the transport of sewage. Water is used in industry for cooling, generating electric power, for the production of a large variety of goods, and other purposes. The greatest demand for water results from irrigation. To satisfy these demands, an increasing quantity of ground-water is used. It is available at many places, where far extended subsurface reservoirs exist; it is better protected against pollution than surface water.

But even though ground-water exists in many geological formations, which seem to be infinite, the availability is limited. The recharge of ground-water is dependent on the supply of atmospheric moisture. Especially in semiarid and arid zones this component of the hydrologic cycle determines the availability of ground-water. Besides natural conditions, technical and economic factors such as drilling of boreholes and the cost of pumping of ground-water have to be considered. Also political decisions can limit the availability of ground-water. If, for instance, wetlands are destroyed by drawdown of ground-water, nontechnical and non-economical aspects are involved. We face undesirable effects of ground-water pumping. Whether these effects are tolerable or intolerable depends on the decision-making processes on a political level.