Word: inlanders
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
South of Los Angeles and inland from Manhattan Beach is a flat suburban area 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...
...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...
...Last year its engineers pumped 100 million gallons of fresh water into the salted gravel under Manhattan Beach. Observation wells drilled alongside showed that the fresh water did not mix much with the salt, but forced it away, forming a mound of freshwater gravel. The sea water still seeped inland around the mound, like a stream flowing around a rock, but at that one point it was stopped...
...begun, naturally, with Old Masters, but the supply was strictly limited. So he went ahead with Gutenberg Bibles, racehorses, Stradivariuses, snuffboxes, stained glass, milk glass, Waterford glass and Venetian glass. He owned four spas, half of Chicago, an inland sea and a buffer state. The trouble was that Gordon's collecting interests quickly flagged, and whenever they did, his personality turned sour. At such times, he would stay slugabed all day, spitefully jolting the market by dumping or buying, and making life difficult for his wife Isabel...
...bulk of these tolls will come from American steel companies, shipping iron ore from Labrador to inland American mills. Since the Mesabi iron deposits are running out while the United States' need for steel climbs, the Labrador deposits are becoming more important. The railroad and port lobbies, of course, believe that steel producers--if they need Labrador ore--shall pay for shipping it, rather than charge this cost up to the American tax-payer...