Use Surface Waters at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

Groundwaters are generally clear, cold, colorless, and harder than the use surface waters waters of the same region; bacterially, they are usually cleaner than use surface waters waters. Water from limestone formations is apt to be hard and may be polluted through fissures from the use surface waters; it forms deposits in pipes and is relatively noncorrosive. In Granite formations, groundwaters are soft, low in dissolved minerals, relatively high in carbon dioxide, and actively corrosive. Groundwater temperature remains fairly stable during the year;at 10 to 50 feet below the use surface waters it is usually the same as the mean atmospheric temperature of the locality; below 50 feet it rises about 1 degree for each 60 feet of depth.

Sources of Supply.—Underground waters are more feasible as sources in small communities, while large cities, with some exceptions, either go great distances for upland use surface waters supplies or utilize the large lakes or rivers nearby. An inventory by the United States Public Health Service in 1948 showed that groundwater supplied almost 65 percent of the 16,747 United States communities served by water supplies; use surface waters waters supplied 29.6 percent, and the remainder received both ground and use surface waters supplies.

Drilling in the ocean seems to be no barrier to commercial enterprise; several large companies are exploiting oil that is beneath the continental shelves. Production platforms have been located in waters up to 104 m (340 ft) deep, and exploratory drillings have reached more than 183 m (600 ft) below the sea's use surface waters. The confidence of oilmen in their drilling technology was dramatically illustrated recently with the purchase of leases for oil exploration in waters up to 549 m (1,800 ft) deep in the Santa Barbara Channel off the coast of California.