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90
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FIGURE 11.-Florida's large springs.
The discharge of springs gives an inkling of the large potential yield of the Floridan aquifer. In the aggregate about 6,000 cfs flows from the springs represented here. But a much larger quantity of water escapes from the aquifer beneath the sea, unobserved and unmeasured.
Aquifer Functions as a Giant Reservoir
The artesian water is replenished by rain in areas where the limestone aquifer lies at the surface and where it is covered only by pervious material (fig. 10). Within these areas the water that falls as rain is stored over long periods of time sustaining the flow of springs and rivers during long droughts, and endowing a perennial supply to wells. No one knows how much recoverable water is stored in the aquifer-there is not sufficient information to enable a well-founded estimate-but we do know that it is very large. Rough calculations put the volume of fresh water in the aquifer; at about 10 times the capacity of Lake Mead, the Nation's largest)