"da Cruz, Daniel - Republic of Texas 02 - Texas on the Rocks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Da Cruz Daniel)

"I CALL AS FIRST WITNESS DR. CARL GARBOLOTTI."

A husky man with a thatch of reddish hair and a bushy guardsman's mustache took his oath and a seat at the witness table.

"Would you state in what capacity you appear before the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Dr. Garbolotti?"

"I am testifying as chief hydrologist of the Interior Department's Office of Land and Water Resources, Mr. Chairman."

"Do you wish to make an introductory statement?"

"In view of the widespread media coverage of the catastrophe which has befallen New York City, sir, I think it is by now common knowledge that the United States is facing water problems of gargantuan dimensions, so perhaps my testimony can be most useful in supplying specifics."

Congressman Castle nodded, making sure that his eyes did not meet the banks of television cameras clustered at the rear of the committee room. It was his first appearance on all four national networks simultaneously, and he must take care, as William S. Grayle had cautioned him, to project an image of calm, confidence, and control. Grayle had provided Castle and his witness with detailed scripts, which they had thoroughly digested but not memorized in order to preserve the illusion of spontaneity.

"Very well, sir," said Castle. "Of all the water problems that face the nation today, which would you characterize as the most pressing?"

"No question about it, that would have to be the exhaustion of the Ogallala aquifer."

"Kindly explain that, Dr. Garbolotti, in words a layman like me can understand."

Garbolotti studied his thumbnail.

"To start with, an aquifer is sort of nature's underground water reservoir, made mostly of limestones, sands, and gravels. This mixture is porous, and the interstices fill with water filtering down through the soil."

"Water from rains?"

"Rains or runoff. This water can be withdrawn by means of wells, drilled or dug. Now, a few million years ago when the Rockies were as high as today's Himalayas, the Ogallala was a vast alluvial plain created by silt runoff from the Rockies to the west. Rains and snows and glacier melt fed this plain. For thousands of years this plain, which today underlies the Republic of Texas panhandle northward through Oklahoma, Kansas, western Colorado, Nebraska, and southern South Dakota, soaked up water. During the next few million years, the plain was covered by a couple of hundred feet of soil deposits. Meanwhile, weather patterns changed. Rainfall dropped to less than thirty inches a year, sufficient for grass to support herds of antelope and buffalo but not enough for anything except subsistence farming.

"Then, late in the nineteenth century, sodbusting pioneers drilled wells and found water under that parched land. There was, in fact, a quadrillion--a million billion-- gallons of it. They watered their stock, and irrigated their fields, on a small scale. But it wasn't until after the great drought of the 1930s that they began to mine this fossil water in a big way."

"Mine, you say?"

"To mine is to extract a nonreplenishable resource such as coal, iron, or water from the earth."

"But surely, rains replenish the Ogallala's--ah--fossil water."

"Unfortunately, very little. The Ogallala is capped with a layer of impermeable stone, and rains run off it right into the sea, along with huge quantities of topsoil. Its farmers have made the plains states the granary of the world, but the day is soon coming when the water will be gone, and the great plains will become a new dust bowl, this time for perhaps another million years."

"But that's, that's--"

"--a fact, sir. It's a disagreeable fact our fanners and the government that props up farm prices have known for years but refused to face. Back in the 1970s, hydrologists estimated that at the then-current depletion rates, the Ogallala will be dry by the year 2020."

"Surely things can't be that bad," protested the chairman.

"I'm giving you facts," said Dr. Garbolotti stubbornly. "If you want fiction, call in the economists."

"But what are the alternatives? Surely there must be some alternative to the depression you are forecasting."

"Not until we find new sources of irrigation water."