Reply to discussion by Michael A. Collins, "Fresh ground water stored in aquifers under the continental shelf: implications from a deep test, Nantucket Island, Massachusetts"

We appreciate the comments made in the discussion by Michael A. Collins, regarding our paper about the anomalously low salinity of water underlying Nantucket Island. However, we feel that in his effort to justify the mathematical approach for solving salt water intrusion problems, he has overlooked several of the major points in this paper. We will try to amplify these points to establish that, indeed, the situation at Nantucket is anomalous, contrary to Collins’ negative conclusion (Collins, 1978).