WaterWired

Too Many Broken Wells: The Complete Four-Part Series

Erin Swanson has finished posting her four-part series, Too Many Broken Wells. She focuses on  wells in Haiti and the NGO, Haiti Outreach.

Access them all below:

Part 1: Too Many Broken Wells

Part 2: Why Do Wells Break?

Part 3: Sustainability and Ownership

Part 4: Successful Wells

And here's an extra: Digging is Easy

Excellent post to bid farewell to March!

"The road to help is paved with good intentions." -- Tracy Baker

NAS Reports: 1) USACE Water Resources Challenges; 2) CC and Polar Ecosystems

Okay, I am doing my NAS - NRC shill thing.

Here are a couple of interesting committee reports.

1) National Water Resources Challenges Facing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

 You can read it online for free, download a prepublication copy, or order a final copy.

The description:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) is responsible for construction, operations, and maintenance of much of the nation's water resources infrastructure. This infrastructure includes flood control levees, multi-purpose dams, locks, navigation channels, port and harbor facilities, and beach protection infrastructure. The Corps of Engineers also regulates the dredging and filling of wetlands subject to federal jurisdictions. Along with its programs for flood damage reduction and support of commercial navigation, ecosystem restoration was added as a primary Corps mission area in 1996.

The National Research Council (NRC) Committee on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Water Resources Science, Engineering, and Planning was convened by the NRC at the request of the Corps of Engineers to provide independent advice to the Corps on an array of strategic and planning issues. National Water Resources Challenges Facing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveys the key water resources challenges facing the Corps, the limits of what might be expected today from the Corps, and future prospects for the agency. This report presents several findings, but no recommendations, to the Corps of Engineers based on initial investigations and discussions with Corps leadership.

National Water Resources Challenges Facing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can serve as a foundational resource for the Corps of Engineers, U.S. Congress, federal agencies, and Corps project co-sponsors, among others.

2) Frontiers in Understanding Climate Change and Polar Ecosystems:Summary of a Workshop

You can read it online for free, download a prepublication copy, or order a final copy.

The description:

The polar regions are experiencing rapid changes in climate. These changes are causing observable ecological impacts of various types and degrees of severity at all ecosystem levels, including society. Even larger changes and more significant impacts are anticipated. As species respond to changing environments over time, their interactions with the physical world and other organisms can also change. This chain of interactions can trigger cascades of impacts throughout entire ecosystems. Evaluating the interrelated physical, chemical, biological, and societal components of polar ecosystems is essential to understanding their vulnerability and resilience to climate forcing.

The Polar Research Board (PRB) organized a workshop to address these issues. Experts gathered from a variety of disciples with knowledge of both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Participants were challenged to consider what is currently known about climate change and polar ecosystems and to identify the next big questions in the field. A set of interdisciplinary "frontier questions" emerged from the workshop discussions as important topics to be addressed in the coming decades. To begin to address these questions, workshop participants discussed the need for holistic, interdisciplinary systems approach to understanding polar ecosystem responses to climate change. As an outcome of the workshop, participants brainstormed methods and technologies that are crucial to advance the understanding of polar ecosystems and to promote the next generation of polar research. These include new and emerging technologies, sustained long-term observations, data synthesis and management, and data dissemination and outreach.

Good stuff. And I'll throw in our committee's letter report on the NAWQA program for free! 

 "Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters." --Samuel Johnson

Amazing Panoramic Photography from Utah!

Okay, there is some water in these so they qualify for WaterWired.

Each of these pictures is from a Utah national park. Click on the name, then when the picture loads, left click on your mouse. As you move the mouse, the image changes.

 Amazing - I'm easy to please!

Sulphur Creek

Arches National Park

Payson Canyon

Aztec Butte

Canyonlands National Park

Thanks to Ari Michelsen for sending these along.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Hydrofracking Heaven or Hell? DOE, API, and VF Publications

Note: Check out this conference on Marcellus Shale hydraulic fracturing, 13-14 April, Pittsburgh. The fuse is short on this! 

Friend and colleague Ari Michelsen just forwarded these two publications: one is a white paper from the  U.S. Department of Energy (2004) and the other, a less technical, more promotional one (Hydraulic Fracturing at a Glance) from the American Petroleum Institute (2008).

 Download DOE_ HF_ White_Paper

Download API_HF_Glance

 The DOE report is an appendix in a larger EPA report, Evaluation of Impacts to Underground Sources of Drinking Water by Hydraulic Fracturing of Coalbed Methane Reservoirs.

By the way, the photo is by Jacques del Conte from the article, "A Colossal Fracking Mess" by Christopher Bateman that appeared online in Vanity Fair in June 2010. 

Some light reading to enjoy, and don't break anything.

"I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -- Thomas Edison

Reisner Redux: Rethinking 'Cadillac Desert'

  The more I ruminate on Western USA water issues, the more I find myself returning to Marc  Reisner's  Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. That seminal book, one of the 100 best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century according to the Modern Library (it's #61), turns 25 this year. It's still worth your time; the writing alone is superb. As I've said for years, it reads like a novel.

One of ther most intriguing aspects of the book is its title. It's catchy: Cadillac Desert.  But I suspect that most people who just call it Cadillac Desert  (or CD) are oblivious to its complete title: Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water [emboldening mine]. Disappearing -that's important, and prescient as well.

Far fewer people realize that he (and Sarah Bates) followed up CD with Overtapped Oasis: Reform Or Revolution For Western Water in which he posited some solutions. That's fodder for another post.

Reisner was not the first to portend the West's water problems but he was the first one to describe them so eloquently, painstakingly documenting their history and the personalities involved.  He died far too young in 2000 at the age of 51. 

Here's a scientific assessment of some of CD's predictions.

So what brings this post on? Well, I just finished two days with my colleagues on the NAS Bay-Delta Committee wrestling with California's water problems. I'm still amazed at the failure of California to tackle statewide regulation of groundwater pumping.

But the main reason was my search for the exact location in CD of the following quote that I heard from a colleague a few weeks ago. It prompted me to read the first ('A Semi-desert with a Desert Heart') and last ('Things Fall Apart') chapters of the book.

The there's the epilogue: 'A Civilization, If You Can Keep It'. 

Can we?

“If surface water can be compared with interest income, and non-renewable groundwater with capital, then much of the West was living mainly on interest income. California was milking interest and capital in about equal proportion. The plains states, however, were devouring capital as a gang of spendthrift heirs might squander a great capitalist's fortune.” – Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Chapter 12, p. 457 (in the original hardcover edition)  [Note: by 'devouring capital' Reisner was referring to the pumping of the Ogallala aquifer, aka the High Plains aquifer.]