“It’s a jumbled mess.”
Robert Libra, Iowa state geologist
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| Photo by Joachim Huber |
What’s a tall, cool glass of water worth to you? The folks in Manson, Iowa (population 1,618) are about to find out. Their two wells are going dry. Townspeople have been pulling water from them for about 100 years, so they can’t complain. But drilling a new well is another story.
Manson sits atop a crater created by a humongous meteorite that crashed to Earth 74 million years ago. The meteorite was 10 billion tons and a mile and a half around. The crater it left spans 24 miles. And that’s a problem for the folks in Manson wanting to drill a well. Although the massive crater filled in ages ago and now looks like any other flat field in northwest Iowa, underneath it’s a jumble of rocks, boulders, and air pockets. This makes it tough to find water with enough pressure to satisfy the needs of a small town. Manson drilled a well late last year but came up dry. They’ll try again. But it isn’t cheap.
So, again the question is: what’s a tall, cool glass of water worth to you? For the town of Manson, experts estimate the answer is $1 million to $2 million.
Read more → Perry Beeman, 74 million years later, meteorite causing headaches for Iowa town, Des Moines Register, February 15, 2012.
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