BETTER GROUND-WATER MANAGEMENT 279 



the challenge of the future lies in adequate management run- 

 ning parallel with wise use. Any policy which leads to un- 

 necessary curtailment of legitimate use is bound to succumb, 

 and should succumb, to the pressures of reality. 



Some believe that temporary excessive use of a water re- 

 source is even warranted where a section of the country is be- 

 ing rapidly developed and major long-range expenditures for 

 a wiser permanent use are unavailable during the period of 

 maximum rapid growth. This position, for example, has been 

 stated by the Metropolitan Water Board of Southern Cali- 

 fornia, in commenting upon the excessive ground-water us- 

 age in this area in the past half century of rapid growth. The 

 excessive use, the Board reflects, perhaps even made the 

 growth possible, while it simultaneously brought on long- 

 range development programs and, of course, certain tempo- 

 rary and even permanent penalties in ground-water depletion. 



Where resources are plentiful, wise management usually is 

 not easy to provide. A distinguished statesman from one of 

 the Mediterranean countries once pointed out that he would 

 not study a rich country in order to determine sound con- 

 servation practice. Where water is scarce, conservation domi- 

 nates. Many years ago Benjamin Franklin paraphrased this 

 axiom in the words, "When the well is dry then we know the 

 worth of water." 



One of the favorable factors in the conservation of ground 

 water is that it is a renewable resource for which certain guid- 

 ing principles of management are easily understood, although 

 not so easily enforced. The difficulty arises whenever one at- 

 tempts to translate a guiding scientific principle into an ef- 

 fective administrative mechanism. This is particularly true 

 in coordinating the use of several renewable resources. To 

 achieve their balanced conservation the administrator may 

 be confronted with the necessity of expanding the use of one 

 resource in order to maintain another. Such administrative 

 decisions on the relative importance of one step versus an- 

 other are not always purely theoretical in nature and inevita- 

 bly lead to competitive struggle geographically and function- 



