Seeking a drink of water from a caribou wallow resulted in dysentery, and drinking water from a free-flowing artesian well resulted in being killed.

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Thanks to an artesian well and an independent generator (which powered old submarine chillers to keep the air breathable), staff could have lived down here for months.

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The superintendent of the Pecos Valley Artesian Conservancy District, Dennis Karnes, can still remember sitting on a well-pipe as a boy and being launched into the duckpond as soon as the farmer opened the valve and natural pressure spewed several thousand gallons a minute of ground water against his legs.

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