122 CONSERVATION 



work at the present time, but a begin- judgment of the geologist was justified, 



niiig has been made by selecting the This water supply fills a need which is 



Kanawha drainage basin for special so urgent that if anything should hap- 



study, and during the next year, if the pen to destroy this well, the railroad 



appropriations to be made by Congress company would not hesitate to bore its 



will permit, the work will be extended counterpart. 



to adjacent basins, such as the Monon- That appeal should be made to the 



gahela, Kentucky, Green, and Cumber- science of geology to state positively 



land. the occurrence, location, and charac- 



The Ohio Valley is commercially the ter of various deep-lying formations 



most important of all the interior river and from a study of only the surface 



countries, and as this valley has been formations to designate a water-bearing 



visited by extremely destructive floods, stratum at a depth so great as this 



the work of the Survey will be of well was driven seems incredible to 



great value. It is also becoming evi- the lay mind ; but such determinations 



dent that the enormous amount of are common. Extensive areas have 



water power available in this area has been thus mapped underground by 



not been generally realized and a part the Geological Survey, and the maps 



of the Survey's work will be to deter- have been accompanied by descrip- 



rmnc more accurately the extent of tions of the character and age of the 



this power and the points at which different rock and earth strata so defi- 



it may be advantageously utilized. n ite that it would seem as if the regions 



, so surveyed must have been sampled 



with a core drill at frequent intervals. 



n w , ,. The great Dakota artesian basin, 



Deep well'drilline f i 



which extends over an enormous area, 



FOR many months a big well-drilling '^ as been accurately mapped, as have 



machine had been borino- into the a ^ nianv other smaller but hardly less 



dry ground of the Black Hills region of important basins. 



South Dakota alongside the track of Water is the most useful and neces- 



the Burlington Railroad at EcKemont. sai T f our mineral resources. Unlike 



Down went the drill 500, a thousand, most of the others, it is renewable and 



2,000, 2,500 feet until the native on- can ^ e utilized over and over, again 



lookers wondered whether the railroad ar) tl again, by man so long as the phe- 



company had fixed no limit to the bore nomena of evaporation and precipita- 



and was simply "going it blind" in- tion continue ; but this does not mean 



definitely. The company's intention that the conservation of the resource 



was very definite, inded. Its officials is not necessary. River supplies can 



had been informed by a geologist of be largely diminished through the de- 



the United States Geological Survey struction of the sources by forest 



that a ^good supply of water would be denudation and otherwise, and arte- 



found in a certain stratum of rock that sian basins also can be exhausted or 



lay at a depth of about 3,000 feet. This seriously injured through wasteful 



geologist had made a study of the sur- misuse. Local statutes that require 



outcrops of the rocks of the re- the capping of wells when not in use 



, and had based his prediction on should, if ' necessary, be enacted and 



And having faith in the strictly enforced to prevent such 



prophecy, the company determined to waste such statutes as have been 



to that depth. It was not neces- enacted in many sections for the pre- 



however, to bore quite to the vention of waste of natural gas and 



F 3,000 feet, for when the drill petroleum. Artesian basins are of 



pne clown 2,980 feet water especially great value, since many of 



led out at the rate of 350 gallons them are located in regions where the 



minute and the faith reposed in the surface water supply is very scant. 



