It is common to hear things like it takes one gallon of water to create a single almond, or watering a lawn can take X gallons per month/year, or it takes X gallons to make one pound of beef or yield X pounds of alfalfa.
My question is, is that water “gone forever”? Or does the water thats used return to the water table/cycle in some other form. When you water the lawn does a large amount of that seep into the ground, evaporate, and return to the atmosphere?
Or is the water used in these ways truly gone forever (in terms of humans being able to use it again)?
It’s not gone forever. However, it may be in a less useful place.
For example, a well draws water from an aquifer, an underground reservoir; which is refilled by rainwater soaking into the ground. But if water is drawn out of the aquifer faster than it is replenished by the rain, eventually the well will run dry.
Even if that water is still on the planet, it’s not available to your well; and so your well has become useless.
Even worse: the nonsense of alfalfa in California. All the residential use accounts for only 15% in this state and most of it does not come from aquifers.
Now, Alfalfa is cultivated to be sold as cattle/horse feed to foreign countries and wastes a ton of water. Same for almonds and other “boutique” crops that don’t contribute in any way to the end of hunger and fill the pockets of few with money at the expense of public water.