It's perfectly understandable. Most people understand the aquifer as being ancient water undisturbed for millions of years. That probably was even true up until the time that the technology came along to drill a deep well. Once we started pulling water out of the ground everything changed. It started the cycle of discharge & recharge.
This is the simplified version of the story but think of aquifers as being underground storage tanks. As you pump water out of the tank it refills with water filtering down from the surface.
Let's say you were trying to fill your new swimming pool from the well. You run the hose straight out and are taking the water out faster than the aquifer can recharge from the surface. The water level in your well drops & drops until it eventually runs dry.
That's the problem we were having at the municipal level when i was doing the day to day operation of our local water company. We had to keep drilling more wells and tap into different aquifers in order to get enough to run the town.
It was sad because one of the very best aquifers in the area was already destroyed by my father's generation. At the time they didn't understand how this all works. They put an unlined landfill right on top of it. Fifty years later the lechate from the landfill was still poisoning the underground water supply in that area. It's even more sad because i've watched people on private wells in that area dying from a variety of cancers for the last 30 years.
There's not enough money in the world to clean up that environmental mess. The only feasible solution has been to deal with it quietly behind the scenes and talk with the people in the area one on one. That water is fine for most things but it's not a good idea to drink it.
Anyway .... long story .... and yes you kinda are drinking your poo poo water from the septic system after it's been filtered through the earth.
LOL .... it blows everyone's mind when we tell em' that. (It's a local running joke among the plumbers here cause they understand how it all fits together.) People's reactions are priceless.
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