Towns square off as a ‘great pond’ turns into a puddle

[unhappycamper]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/05/towns-square-off-great-pond-turns-into-puddle/NeswM5a5gLi9XA4SzoKzNM/story.html



Mark Gilmore and Kyle Pribish sat on what used to be the bottom of Kingsbury Pond in Norfolk, where the water is vanishing.

Towns square off as a ‘great pond’ turns into a puddle
By Brian MacQuarrie Globe Staff
March 05, 2016

NORFOLK — Mark Gilmore’s patio once overlooked a soothing expanse of spring-fed water in a state-protected “great pond.” These days, Gilmore looks out at a lengthening stretch of rock-strewn dirt.

Kingsbury Pond, once 26 acres, is now closer to a 9-acre puddle. And angry residents who live on its wooded shores are quick to name a culprit: the neighboring town of Franklin, which operates a nearby well that sucks up hundreds of thousands of gallons of groundwater every day.

“It’s starting to get scary. You can’t just suck a pond dry,” said Gilmore, who like many neighbors thinks Franklin is siphoning water from an aquifer that should be filling Kingsbury Pond. “This is the lowest that anybody has seen it — ever.”

But where the pond’s admirers see a water-guzzling goliath next door, Franklin officials and some environmentalists see something more benign: a dry 2015 that lowered water levels across Massachusetts.

[saturnsring]

1. desertification is in full swing and it will bring the great american desert