Thursday, September 27, 2007

Well, well -- here's the source of the word artesian

from www.wordsmith.org

artesian (ahr-TEE-zhuhn) adjective
Pertaining to a well that has water rising to the surface under natural pressure, without the need of a pump.
[After Artois, a former province in France, where many such wells were drilled.]

"When settlers first came to Pullman, they found artesian water bubbling out of the ground. A hundred years later, those springs are gone, and the source of this hydrological abundance continues to drop 1.5 feet per year. Water mining is just that -- and sooner or later, someone's going to have to pay the piper."
-- Chuck Pezeshki; Seattle Post-Intelligencer; WSU, Enviros Teeing Off Over Water Rights; Sep 5, 2007.

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