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The following is intended more as a public service than a news item. It is a service to all those who have oft pondered whether groundwater or ground water is correct, whether it is one or two words. The issue has been known to cause hurt feelings, even office conflicts.
Whether or not the matter will now be settled once and for all remains to be seen, but the Office of Groundwater at the U.S. Geological Survey has come out in favor of the one-word version. This from its March 26 Office of Groundwater Technical Memorandum, 2009.03:
“Language evolves, and it is clear that the one-word spelling of groundwater has become the preferred usage both nationally and internationally. The one-word spelling has been used by the Merriam-Webster online dictionary since 1998. Most water-resources publications also use the one-word spelling, as do many technical groups, such as the National Research Council. With the emphasis on interdisciplinary science, many USGS scientists who are not specialists in the field commonly use the one-word form, as increasingly do many hydrologists within the Water Resources Discipline ... With this memorandum, we are making a transition to the use of groundwater as one word in USGS.”
Errata: The USGS, not the EPA released the memorandum. The previous version of this article credited the EPA with the release.