Study: North Cape Coral slowly sinking, likely due to over-pumping for water desalinization plant

Nearly 40 square miles of North Cape Coral is sinking, an inch or more every year, due to over-pumping the aquifers below the city for household water.

The reason for a deepening depression in that area was detailed in a recent study in the journal Science of Remote Sensing by researchers from the Geological Survey of Norway.

At the center of the sinking soil is Cape Coral’s desalinization plant and the 22 wells scattered through the surrounding neighborhoods. Pumping brackish water from as deep as 1,250 feet into the reverse osmosis plant,the wells produce more than one million gallons of clean, drinkable water every day for the city’s burgeoning population.

But that rate of extraction comes with serious environmental costs that far exceed the price paid in dollars to run the desalinization plant, the researchers say.

The heavy pumping lowers the water table by more than three feet of water per year, and without giving the aquifers time to refill, so much underground space that held water has collapsed it could house enough water to fill eight Empire State Buildings.

Now that the aquifer has compacted it can never refill. The landscape above is sinking into the void, which has dropped the ground level surrounding the desalinization plant by as much as 1.5 feet in a process called subsidence, the Norwegian researchers report.