Smart Faith Kearns on the headlines this week about the “discovery” of a bunch of groundwater beneath parched California:

[O]n a symbolic level it’s really just fascinating how often we get caught up in stories being saved — by a good winter, a new dam, new water. I wish I didn’t find it so depressing. Maybe this really is a great time to be thinking about our deep groundwater — we are, after all, in the middle of a very large experiment in managing groundwater.

At the same time, it feels…bad. In a way I can’t quite put my finger on. Like a neverending search for an elusive buried treasure? A lost Atlantis? Eden? With a dash of manifest destiny? I don’t know, but guess it makes for better headlines than the mostly invisible work so many people do every day to make the best of what we’ve got.