The secret's out: Tons of water under Oregon's Cascades

[depakid]

The most valuable resource in the national forests atop the Oregon Cascades may not be the timber and recreation spots they're known for, but something else that's largely invisible: water.

Scientists from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University have in recent years quietly realized that the high Cascades in Oregon and far Northern California contain an immense subterranean reservoir about as large as the biggest man-made reservoirs in the country.

The secret stockpile stores close to seven years' worth of Oregon rain and snow and is likely to become increasingly precious, even priceless, as population and climate add pressure to water supplies.

The reservoir hides within young volcanic rock -- less than 1 million years old -- in the highest reaches of the Cascades. The rock is so full of cracks and fissures it forms a kind of vast geological sponge. Heavy rain and snow falling on the rock percolate into the sponge, like a river filling a reservoir.

"It's not just the fact we get a lot of rain in Oregon that gives us copious amounts of water," says Gordon Grant, a research hydrologist at the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station leading the research. "It's the unique geology -- the plumbing system -- that allows us to retain much of it."

It's easily one of the biggest groundwater systems known in a mountainous region anywhere on the planet, he said.

Some water leaks steadily from the hidden reservoir, gushing from springs into rivers such as the McKenzie, Deschutes and Clackamas. Many of the rivers flow into the Willamette, keeping the river through Portland full of water even now, when mountain snow that feeds many other Western rivers is long gone and the rivers are just trickles.

"The geology is kind of like your genetic code in terms of the water we can get out of the Willamette basin," said Julia Jones, a geosciences professor at Oregon State University and vice chair of a National Research Council panel examining the connection between forests and water.

That all-year reliability of water from the underground store puts Oregon in a much stronger position than the rest of the West as global warming dries out nearby states, some already suffering through record drought.

At the same time, it may also make the Northwest a sought-after source of future water for the rest of the West. Southwest states have already floated the far-out idea of piping in water from the Columbia River. Businesses such as technology companies that require reliable water supplies for manufacturing may see the consistency of Oregon's enormous reservoir as a strategic advantage.

Looking into the future, "the value of water coming out of this system absolutely exceeds any other economic value from national forestlands," Grant says.

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2008/10/the_secrets_out_tons_of_water.html

[RC]

1. So now they are going to sink wells into it and pump it dry...

The forests depending on this water will die and then what?
All anyone can ever see is money, money, money on the next bottom line. No one of any consequence can see past the bottom line after the up coming one. We are the crabgrass, bindweed and dandelions on the lawn of life.

[AlecBGreen]

2. dont be so quick to overreact

"The forests depending on this water will die..."

Oregon's coast is one of the wettest environments in the country. Its a temperate rainforest and some ares get over 10' of rain in a year. Piping out groundwater wont kill all the forest.

What will probably happen is everybody and their cousin will stake a claim to the water and it'll be sold as fast as it can be pumped out.