62 The Inexhaustible Resource of Technology 



face of ponds and reservoirs. ^^ Similar studies of the transpiration 

 process seem to hold promise. Other research in progress on recharge 

 to underground aquifers and on the nature of the salt water — fresh 

 water interface in coastal areas, as well as continuing study of the 

 mechanics of ground-water flow, give promise of materially increasing 

 our ability to expand wisely the use of existing supplies of under- 

 ground water. 



And perhaps still further in the future will be the possibility of eco- 

 nomic justification for conversion of saline water to fresh water. It 

 seems certain that further work will greatly increase the number of 

 areas in which one or another of the several processes now under 

 study may be economically justified. If for example, oil field brines, 

 and other saline ground waters could be economically treated, for 

 domestic and industrial uses, many places in the arid or semi-arid 

 Southwest might have their current water problems greatly alleviated. 



I am not especially familiar with the changes that have occurred 

 in the two other major fields that were considered by the Governors' 

 Conference — soils and the foods produced from the soil, and forest 

 resources. But there can be little doubt that the 1908 conferees were 

 seriously concerned about the possibility of an inadequate future sup- 

 ply of food and forest products (exhaustion in the case of renewable 

 resources being an unlikely end-result) and of accelerated erosion of 

 soil, as a result of the exploitation of forest and range that was being 

 so vigorously carried on as our country was being developed. 



Perhaps the most graphic means of bringing out the magnitude of 

 the change in our national situation, so far as food and forest products 

 are concerned, is to contrast the statements of J. J. Hill that both for 

 timber and grain the United States would face within the century 

 either exhaustion or become dependent upon imports,^^ with the intro- 

 ductory statement of the recent report of the Commission on In- 

 creased Industrial Use of Agricultural Products: "American farmers 

 have succeeded so well in the necessary effort to increase their effi- 



2S G. E. Harbeck, "Can Evaporation Losses be Reduced?" address delivered 

 at First Intersociety Conference on Irrigation and Drainage, San Francisco, 

 April 29, 1957. Irving Langmuir and V. J. Schaefer, "Rates of Evaporation of 

 Water through Compressed Monolayers on Water," Journal of the Franklin 

 Institute, Vol. 235 (1943). 



27 James J. Hill, op. cit., pp. 65, 72. 



