Memory Lane Beckons: When 'Managed Aquifer Recharge' was 'Artificial Recharge' was 'Cyclic Storage'

Stephen J. Burges, Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington and hydrologist extraordinaire reminded me the other day that before it was called 'Managed Aquifer Recharge' it was called 'Cyclic Storage', a term he said was first used by legendary civil engineer Harvey O. Banks in the mid-1950s.

With his message he included a paper he wrote with UW colleague Dennis P. Lettenmaier in Groundwater in 1982, 'Cyclic Storage: A Preliminary Assessment'

Download Lettenmaier_et_al-1982-Groundwater

Abstract

The performance of a simplified water resource system consisting of a single surface reservoir and adjacent aquifer storage operated as a coupled flow buffering device is investigated on an annual scale to provide insight into the most important physical and climatic (streamflow) parameters governing cyclic storage performance. The hypothetical system is fully characterized by aquifer capacity, pumping and recharge capacity, surface storage size, annual demand, and reservoir inflow statistics, including annual mean, coefficient of variation, skew coefficient, lag one correlation coefficient, and Hurst coefficient. System performance under a range of these parameters is reviewed via Monte Carlo simulation; for the cases considered system performance is almost always limited by total system storage (sum of surface and aquifer storage). A preliminary economic analysis indicates that the cost of providing flow buffering via development of subsurface storage is about an order of magnitude less than for surface storage in the cases considered.

Very good paper; I had forgotten about it. Their approach is one you don't see very much these days, especially in groundwater work. Anyone recall the 'Hurst phenomenon'? I remember it from my days in 'Statistical Hydrology' taught by the late Chester 'Chet' Kisiel. Rediscovering the Lettenmaier-Burges paper - now 35 years old - recalls the ridiculous advise I heard one colleague give to his students a few years ago: 'Never bother reading anything written more than than five years ago.'

In that same issue of Groundwater (actually it was Ground Water - two words - in those days) I found an editorial by Jay H.Lehr, then the Executive Director of the NGWA and editor of Ground Water: 'Artificial Ground-Water Recharge: A Solution to Many U.S. Water Supply Problems'.

I do recall reading a number of 'Flushing Meadows' papers, describing the USDA experiments by Harry Nightingale and others in artificial recharge via rapid infiltration. And then there are the 1974 paper by R. F. Brown and D.C. Signor, 'Artificial Recharge - State of the Art' and the 1994 NRC-WSTB report, Ground Water Recharge Using Waters of Impaired Quality.

I used to devour anything written by Don Warner, an engineering professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla (now MUST) who was the expert on the practical aspects of artificial recharge by wells. And in my own early 1970s backyard of Tucson, friend L.G. 'Gray' Wilson was doing infiltration basin and pit recharge studies ant the University of Arizona's Water Resources Research Center.  

MAR v. AR v. Cyclic Storage. This has all the makings of a 'Groundwater v. Ground Water' water war! Don't forget ASR and SAR!

Don't get me started. Time to go.

Thanks to Steve for initiating a very useful trip down memory lane. I could use more such trips.

"Never read anything written more than five years ago." - advice given by a colleague to his hydrology students (c. 2000)

Comments

[Michael]

Great post!
Glad to see ASR / MAR is still an innovative approach up to date. ;-)

[Rainbow Water Coalition]

Lest we forget ASTR, too!
http://www.water-technology.net/projects/aquiferstoragetransp/