Nesson began working out the equation, using the values Guswa had supplied on the morning of his five-gallon-a-minute calculation. Nesson discovered immediately that the equation did not balance. He assumed for the moment that Guswa was right about twelve inches of annual rainfall entering the groundwater system through Grace. He assumed further that Guswa was right about the angle of incline toward the wells and also the low conductivity of ground moraine. How big, then, Nesson asked himself, would the opening—the pipe, as it were—have to be to accommodate the volume of water that flowed through the system? Using X to represent the size of the opening, Nesson performed some simple algebra and reworked the equation so that it looked like this:

Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action, loc. 2153