Enormous freshwater reservoir discovered off the East Coast may be 20,000 years old and big enough to supply NYC for 800 years

A giant reservoir of "secret" fresh water off the East Coast that could potentially supply a city the size of New York City for 800 years may have formed during the last ice age, when the region was covered in glaciers, researchers say.

Preliminary analyses suggest the reservoir, which sits beneath the seafloor and appears to stretch from offshore New Jersey as far north as Maine, was locked in place under frigid conditions around 20,000 years ago, hinting that it formed in the last glacial period due, partly, to thick ice sheets.

Last summer, researchers went on an expedition to follow up on reports from the late 1960s and early 1970s of fresh water beneath the seafloor off the East Coast. "It was quite the project and sort of a lifelong dream," Brandon Dugan, the expedition's co-chief scientist and a professor of geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines, told Live Science.

Yea fossil glacial water flowed down dip in the last glacial wwhen sea levels were up too 400 feet lower so a lot of recharge zone that’s underwater was dry land at the time. Plus melting glacial runoff in huge amounts right over these recharge zones. Once covered in seawater and fresh sedimentation sealed the updip unconfined areas the water was trapped even though it was under seawater the sediments above it protects it from mixing or moving.

The real question is cost offshore drilling works for a substance that is worth $80-100 for a barrel that’s 42 freedom units worth. Water sells for $4-6 per 1000 freedom units it probably will never be economical to drill and exploit such a resource.

Desal using Israeli tech can get you a cubic commie unit (1m^3) for 53 cents that’s 264 gallons worth. That would be 200 cents per 1000 which is less thanHALF what the going rate is for fresh water in North Texas and most other palaces in the USA at that.

That 53 cents is delivered retail prices in Israel that includes, energy costs, O&M,capex, capex recovery, taxes and transmission and distribution. It’s all in. No one touches the them with desal they are the undisputed world leader. So with tech like that on the open market no you are not.going to drill baby drill in the open ocean for subsea freshwater aquifers.

Yeah I am a Hydrogeo Phd ‘12

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