The reality is that there are two approaches for water: open loop and closed loop, and you can guess correctly at what they mean. The problem is that's subtle and we can't have subtle conversations about things.
But giving up a local water table might even be seen as an acceptable sacrifice, it's done for agriculture all the time, if only it wasn't done by and for the immense profit of corporations that aim to destroy all entry level jobs and profess to be scared by what havoc their own creation will wreak, all while creating an unprecedented financing bubble.
Like, that's not very subtle at all. You can pick out some detail and try to make it about subtleties, but the larger context is very much not about subtleties.
So you're saying that all the rules and laws and best practices that HN has cheered for over the years that apply to new construction and new industry and claim to be about sustainability and environmental protections (among other things) didn't actually do what they were sold as being able to do?
Either the new ones are cleaner (I suspect they are but the difference is probably mostly on paper), or we all got lied to.
I have personally observed this with them getting exceptions to fire codes everyone else has to comply with.