And it’s not going to be replaced any time soon. Irrigating rice fields in Richvale, Calif. Jae C. Hong/AP By now, the impacts of California’s unchecked groundwater pumping are well-known: the dropping water levels, dried-up wells and slowly sinking farmland in parts of the Central Valley. But another consequence gets less attention, one measured not by acre-feet or gallons-per-minute but the long march of time. As California farms and cities drill deeper for groundwater in an era of drought and climate change, they no longer are tapping reserves that percolated into the soil over recent centuries. They are pumping water that fell to Earth during a much wetter climatic regime—the ice age. Such water is not just old. It’s prehistoric. It is older than the earliest pyramids on the Nile, older than the world’s oldest tree, the bristlecone pine. It was swirling down rivers and streams 15,000 to 20,000 years ago when humans were crossing the Bering Strait from Asia. Read the rest at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. More: California Is Pumping Water That Fell to Earth 20,000 Years Ago

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California Is Pumping Water That Fell to Earth 20,000 Years Ago