Word: basins
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...that was once semidesert. It had no surface water, but under its tight clay subsoil lay water-saturated gravel. When real-estate boomers discovered this treasure, they drilled well after well, and the well water, used recklessly, made the land salable for home sites and industries. Now the "west basin," as the geologists call it, has oil refineries and factories, as well as 500,000 people. But its underground water is almost gone. The water table is some 50 to 60 ft. below sea level, and sea water is seeping rapidly into the gravel. Some wells two miles inland have...
Local boosters and realty boards were not anxious to shout about this creeping threat to their real-estate values, but Water Engineer Oswald A. Gierlich of Manhattan Beach refused to keep mum. He knew that the west basin's gravel recharges very slowly, that fresh water comes a long distance from inland mountains and filters through gaps in an impermeable barrier called the Inglewood-Newport Fault (see diagram). The invading sea water moves much faster. Gierlich figured that, if nothing were done, sea water would fill the whole basin in about ten years and permanently spoil the vital wells...
...Politics spun their plots and counterplots and moved toward the inevitable day of decision. The stock market "ended the week on a firmer note." Even the latest crisis in Europe-serious as it was-had the ring of old cut glass: Germany and France were feuding about the Saar basin...
Just when it looked as if the French and Germans might forget some of their differences in the common peril, an ancient trouble spot set them snarling at each other. The spot: the smoky Saar basin, a tiny wedge of the Rhine valley on the Franco-German frontier. Barely larger (743 sq. mi.) than Allegheny County, Pa., though its population (900,000) is the densest in Europe, the Saar has both strategic position and rich mineral resources, and it has been a tug-of-war ground for centuries...
...result, Socony's proved domestic reserves have climbed from 1,121,000,000 bbls. in 1946 to 1,641,000,000. It has tapped an immense pool in its Pegasus Field in Texas, is one of the biggest explorers in North Dakota's promising Williston Basin, and has 6,800,000 acres on lease in Canada. It is already producing at its Duhamel field in Alberta, and a month ago brought in the new Roseray well in southern Saskatchewan...