NEW YORK, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- A wealth of underground water helped create America, its vast cities and bountiful farmland, but Americans are now squandering that inheritance, and overuse is draining and damaging aquifers nationwide, reported The New York Times in a headline story in its printed edition on Saturday.
The newspaper analyzed water levels reported at 84,544 monitoring wells examined for trends since 1920, revealing a crisis that threatens American prosperity -- "nearly half the sites have declined significantly over the past 40 years as more water has been pumped out than nature can replenish."
"In the past decade, four of every 10 sites hit all-time lows. And last year was the worst yet," it said. "America's life-giving resource is being exhausted in much of the country, and in many cases it won't come back. Huge industrial farms and sprawling cities are draining aquifers that could take centuries or millenniums to replenish themselves if they recover at all."
Many of the aquifers that supply 90 percent of the nation's water systems, and which have transformed vast stretches of America into some of the world's most bountiful farmland, are being severely depleted, it said, adding that "these declines are threatening irreversible harm to the American economy and society as a whole."
