04-10-2015, 06:16 AM
Read it twice Southernmost. Nowhere does it say that the aquifer is huge. It says it's there where nobody expected it to be. All very preliminary. The article referenced various groups and entities that might benefit from pumped water in the saddle area, including Hawaiian Homelands who is looking to lease land to others, but that aquifer is not currently being exploited. It would make far more sense to me for people, and not just Native Hawaiians, to protest the use of the aquifer rather than the TMT. In other parts of the world aquifers that were only a couple of hundred feet down are now thousands of feet down due to overuse. How long this one would last is unknown.
Did you know that the fresh water lense under the Ewa plain on Oahu used to be maintained by the irrigation of sugar cane? When the cultivation of cane ceased various wells in that area turned brackish. So there is water a few hundred feet down in the saddle today, in an area that gets very little rainfall. There might not be tomorrow. The article you repeatedly reference does nothing to refute that.
Did you know that the fresh water lense under the Ewa plain on Oahu used to be maintained by the irrigation of sugar cane? When the cultivation of cane ceased various wells in that area turned brackish. So there is water a few hundred feet down in the saddle today, in an area that gets very little rainfall. There might not be tomorrow. The article you repeatedly reference does nothing to refute that.