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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
New exploration tools and techniques for a breakthrough paradigm of regional groundwater occurrence Fresh water is undoubtedly our most precious resource aside from the air we breathe, and the only commodity whose cost has steadily risen over time. At the same time, our understanding of the origins, pathways, and recharge mechanisms of the earth's most valuable "economic" mineral-groundwater-remains in the nineteenth century. It is ironic that this scientific anachronism is contributing to a global shortage of available fresh water supplies while oil, gas, and mineral discoveries have proliferated, vastly increasing the world's energy, precious metals, and industrial mineral reserves. Modern Groundwater Exploration details applications and results of proven twenty-first- century technologies and geological concepts adapted from the oil, gas, and mineral exploration industries for evaluating, developing, and managing previously undiscovered, massive, sustainable groundwater resources. Unprecedented in both its scope and authority, this timely book presents: * A new groundwater paradigm, coined Megawatershed, which accurately and comprehensively describes the earth's natural complex groundwater systems * Innovative exploration, drilling, and testing technologies that make major new ground-water sources more locatable and cost-effective to produce than ever before * Actual case studies in which megawatershed methods have identified vast quantities of new water and brought new hope to previously arid and desperately water-short locales * Chapters by former OECD DAC chairman Alexander R. Love, geopolitical analyst Dr. Ewan Anderson, and former director of the Trinidad and Tobago Water Resources Agency Dr. Utam Maharaj on the tremendous global implications of the megawater-shed paradigm. These experts explore the many beneficial applications of megawater-shed development, from macroeconomics to development of small island developing state (SIDS), and from critical environmental issues to water conflict resolution and the potential for a second "green revolution" The world's need for clean, dependable water is more urgent-and addressable-than ever before. Let Modern Groundwater Exploration introduce you to the authors' revolutionary megawatershed paradigm, along with the latest concepts and technologies for accessing vast reservoirs of groundwater-still today's safest, cleanest, and most plentiful water resource.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: A Historical Perspective
Chapter 2: Megawatersheds—A New Paradigm
Global Implications
The Way Ahead
Biography
References
Chapter 3: Case Study—Northwest Somalia 1984–1986
Introduction
Background and Setting
General Description of Study Area
Executive Summary of Project Goals and Results
Water Development Team
Logistical Constraints and Challenges
Technical Approach—Overview of MESA© Program Application
MESA © Program Application in Somalia
Summary of the Areas Selected for Detailed Field Investigation
Drainage Basin Designation System
Results of Hydrologic Analysis
Infiltrometer Results
Shallow Groundwater Potential
Results of Composite Hydrogeological Analysis
Detailed Field Investigation and Reconnaissance Level Geophysics
Summary of Areas Favorable for Test Drilling
Groundwater Potential of Primary Water Development Targets
Examples of Analyses for Sites Chosen for Detailed Field Investigation
Dibrawein Site 4—Soadahada Wadi
References
Map References
Chapter 4: Sudan Case Studies and Model
Introduction
Northern Sudan—1987
Red Sea Province—1988-1990
Megawatersheds Model—1989
References
Chapter 5: Case Study—Tobago, West Indies 1999–2000
Introduction
Water Development Team
Background
Setting
Logistical Constraints and Challenges
Geology and Hydrology
Technical Program
Megawatershed Paradigm
Megawatershed Exploration
Remote-Sensing Data and Image Processing
Geological Analysis
Hydrological Modeling
Recharge Calculations
Model Calibration
Favorable Zone Assessment
Conclusions
Biography
References
Chapter 6: Case Study—Trinidad, West Indies 2000–2002
Introduction
Technical Program Summary
Project Team
Constraints and Challenges
Trinidad Technical Program: Concepts, Methods, and Technologies
Megawatershed Paradigm
Megawatersheds Exploration Program
Remote Sensing
Sieve Data and Analysis
History of Geological Mapping in Trinidad
ETI Geological Mapping
Hydrogeological Assessment and Results
Discoveries of Megawatersheds and Aquifer Systems
Summary of Groundwater Resources
Chapter 7: Global Implications of a Hydrogeological Paradigm Shift
Paradigms
Economic Considerations
Social Considerations
Security Considerations
Legal Considerations
Military Considerations
Political Considerations
Conclusion and Prospect
Biography
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Table 1
Table 2
Table 3
Table 4
Table 5
Table 6
Table 7
Table 8
Table 9
Table 10
Table 11
Table 12
Table 13
Table 14
Table 15
List of Illustrations
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Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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Modern Groundwater Exploration
Discovering New Water Resources in Consolidated Rocks Using Innovative Hydrogeologic Concepts, Exploration, Drilling, Aquifer Testing, and Management Methods
Robert A. Bisson
Earthwater Technology International, Inc.
Jay H. Lehr
The Heartland Institute
Copyright © 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923,978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993 or fax 317-572-4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print, however, may not be available in electronic format.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Bisson, Robert A.
Modern groundwater exploration: discovering new water resources in consolidated rocks using innovative hydrogeologic concepts, exploration, drilling, aquifer testing, and management methods/Robert
A. Bisson, Jay H. Lehr.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-471-06460-2 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Groundwater—Research—Methodology. 2. Prospecting—Geophysical methods.
I. Lehr, Jay H., 1936- II. Title.
GB1001.7.B57 2004
628.1'14—dc22
2003023862
“. . .The ocean is a desert with its life underground and a perfect disguise above . . .”
from “A Horse With No Name,” Dewey Bunnell, 1971
Preface
This book is about the continued relevance of exploration and discovery in improving the water shortages faced by a thirsty world. While the popular press seems mesmerized by ethical debates concerning quantum leaps in our understanding of the human genome and the worldwide blame-game over global warming, equally significant discoveries in the energy and groundwater fields resulting from modern geophysical exploration concepts and technologies have been largely ignored. This is a story of the vital importance of iconoclasm in modern science—a story of how a few people thinking outside the box can make important contributions to the world.
No one knows how many unexplored and unexploited aquifers exist, but the amount of water stored in them is thought to be considerable. The focus of this book is to help exploration geologists around the globe to uncover vast stores of water yet undiscovered. Water exploration must tie itself to the many great advances made by the petroleum industry, which long ago tied itself to computer technology. Today we stand on the launching pad to a journey into high technology groundwater location and development whose foundation has been laid for us through advances in petroleum and other mineral explorations.
In a brilliant article by Jonathan Rauch in the January 2001 issue of Atlantic Monthly (“The New Old Economy: Oil, Computers and the Reinvention of the Earth”), the author paints a most optimistic picture of future oil availability. He predicts “that the demand for oil will peter out well before any serious crimp is felt in the supply” because “something cheaper and cleaner … will come along, and the oil age will end with large amounts of oil left unwanted in the ground.”
Rauch arrives at this belief because he likens the energy industry to the computer industry. He says, “Most people understand intuitively that the essential resource in Silicon Valley is not magnetic particles on floppy discs or hard drives in servers, or lines of code or bits of data; it is human ingenuity.” He concludes, ingeniously, that “knowledge, not petroleum, is becoming the critical resource in the oil business; and though the supply of oil is fixed, the supply of knowledge is boundless.”
In every sense except the one that is most literal and least important, the planet's resource base is growing larger, not smaller. Every day the planet becomes less an object and more an idea.
It is difficult to fully understand why groundwater stands alone as a resource whose cost has risen rather than fallen in the crosshairs of man's ingenuity. It may be that water has almost always been controlled by governments rather than private industry, thereby reducing creative solutions. It may be that too little research funding was afforded groundwater because, although water's intrinsic value was recognized, its true economic value was, and largely still is, maintained artificially low through government subsidies. It is also true that the international hydrology community impeded innovation as much as conformist geologists resisted plate tectonics only half a century ago.
Whatever the reason, we sincerely hope that the information, the concepts, the data, and the achievements we present on the following pages break up the logjam of progress that has held back the optimization of groundwater development the world over.
Robert A. BissonEarthwater Technology International, Inc.www.watermap.comJay H. LehrThe Heartland Institutewww.e3power.com
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, the authors offer our sincere gratitude to Sabine Bisson and Janet Lehr for their steadfast support and forbearance during the production of this book.
We are most appreciative of the chapter contributions of Mr. Alexander Raymond Love (Chapter 1), Dr. Utam Maharaj (Chapter 4), and Dr. Ewan Anderson (Chapter 6), and also recognize co-authors of primary source materials summarized in Chapters 3, 4, and 6 of the book, including Dr. Roland B. Hoag (original technical reports on Somalia, Sudan, and Trinidad), Joseph Ingari (original technical reports on Somalia and Sudan), Dr. Farouk El-Baz, David Hoisington, Dennis Albaugh (original technical reports on Somalia and Sudan), and Dr. Mohamed Ayed and Dr. Farouq Ahmed (original technical reports on Sudan). Special thanks are extended to James Jacobs for his technical review and editing of the book manuscript and to Richard Cooper for his on-target Dewey Bunnell quotation.
We applaud the visionary leadership of Warren and Lisa Wiggins of the New Transcentury Foundation (NTF) and former USAID East and Southern Africa REDSO Director and Sudan Mission Director John Koehring in daring to apply new technologies to solving Africa's chronic water-related catastrophes. The authors offer special recognition to Trinidad water well-drilling entrepreneur Lennox Persad, who risked millions of his own money to help ensure the security of his country's future water supply. We also acknowledge former chairman Nazir Khan, former CEO Kansham Khanhai, Water Resources Agency Director Dr. Utam Maharaj, and Tobago Regional Manager Oswyn Edmund of the Water and Sewerage Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (WASA), for their leadership in opening the way for breakthrough water discoveries employing modern groundwater exploration methods, along with current CEO Errol Grimes for his dedication to exporting WAS'As new knowledge base to other Caribbean states. The megawatersheds projects implemented by NTF, USAID, and WASA represent the bookends of major groundwater discoveries over the past twenty years.
Robert Bisson wishes to thank his many other mentors, teachers, partners, employees, and clients, who collectively made possible the advancements of techniques and development of new concepts that led to the fresh body of knowledge reflected in the case study summaries of this book, including Col. Reginald Bisson, Adrienne Bisson, Dr. Roland B. Hoag, Jr., Joseph C. Ingari, Peter D. Hofman, Gary Armstrong, Larry Whitesell, Hon. John H. Sununu, William Goldstein, Dr. Hasan Qashu, Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Dr. William K. Widger, Jr., Dr. Olaf R. McLetchie, Dr. Lincoln R. Page, Robert M. Snyder, Alan Vorhees, Donald Gevirtz, Robert Kaufman, Kermit Roosevelt, Jon Armstrong, Dr. Tony Barringer, Robert Porter, Dr. Compton Chase-Lansdale, Donald Jutton, Frank Kenefick, Hon. Kevin Harrington, Judge J. John Fox, James Lee, Douglas Lee, Arthur Lipper, Ian Sims, and Dr. Dennis Long.
Jay Lehr wishes to thank posthumously Dr. Joseph Upson, his first boss and mentor at the U.S. Geological Survey in 1955. When asked “what are the working hours” by this young scientist, he responded by saying, “We start promptly at 8:30 am and we leave when the job is done.” Happily, because of Joe I learned that the job is never done and, as this book reflects, the job in groundwater science is still ongoing.
Introduction
It was only in the last quarter of the twentieth century that the subject of groundwater was transformed from its nineteenth century place as a popular topic of mystical origins to a key economic commodity and political issue scrutinized by modern exploration scientists. As a consequence, the world in general knows little more now about the nature and extent of its fresh groundwater resources than it did at the turn of the nineteenth century. At the same time, governments and the scientific community do today agree on one point—that groundwater can no longer be considered a resource to be freely and blindly extracted and subjected to contamination with impunity, but rather must be “managed” and “protected” as an endangered resource.
The fatal flaw in this well-intentioned action plan is lack of data. Even basic water-related data, from precipitation to runoff, are sparse and often inaccurate, and far less is known about the water-related properties of underground environments. This holds true as much in developed countries as in the third world. “If you can't measure water, you can't manage it,” observed Arthur Askew, director of hydrology at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in the August 9, 2002, issue of Science. Unfortunately, while ill-planned and poorly documented water well-drilling schemes have proliferated worldwide, governments and international development institutions have not historically supported scientifically designed hydrogeological surveys and groundwater data logging, and private sector profit incentives to perform those tasks have been sorely lacking. As a consequence, very little data-driven published or archival material exists about measured quantities of global groundwater resources, and critical water-related decisions are being made behind a curtain of ignorance that adversely affects the global economy and the lives of all of us.
The coincidence of space-age technological innovations and scientific advancements has opened a window of opportunity to bring the groundwater knowledge base up to par with other strategic minerals in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Governments and financial institutions are turning fresh water into a market-value commodity by privatizing water utilities. This being the case, fresh water stored and flowing beneath the ground should rightly be classified as an “economic mineral” and be thoroughly investigated by economic geologists using modern geologic concepts and all of the space-age exploration tools that revolutionized the minerals industry over the past forty years.
This book presents readers with solid data supporting a new paradigm that vastly increases estimates of groundwater balance along with a description of the modern exploration and development methods required to measure and access these untapped resources.
1A Historical Perspective
In humid regions, primitive humans paid little attention to water. It was always present and, like air, was taken as a matter of course. However, in semiarid and arid regions, the occurrence of water controlled the activities of humans. Villages were originally built on perennial streams or around water holes. Our early movements consisted chiefly of migrations to perennial water in the dry season and ventures into new pastures or hunting grounds in the wet season.
Primitive humans learned to dig for water, possibly by observing the actions of wild horses and wolves in search of water. As soon as we learned to domesticate and rear cattle and sheep, the water well became the most important possession.
The Bible described many incidents illustrating the importance of groundwater supplies to the tribes of Israel. Abraham and Isaac were renowned for their success at constructing wells. The Father of Modern Hydrology, O.E. Meinzer once said that the twenty-sixth chapter of Genesis read like a water-supply paper. Most people recall from the Old Testament how the Jews suffered for want of water in their 40 years of wandering in the deserts. To quell a near revolt by his people, Moses smote a rock with his rod and a fountain of water burst forth.
The ancient Greeks in the early seventh century BC told the story of Tantalus, Zeus' favorite mortal son who stole the ambrosia and nectar from the gods that gave the gods endless lives. Tantalus tried to share the heavenly food with mortals to give humans immortality. Zeus punished Tantalus by hurling him to Tartarus, a prison of darkness where Tantalus currently stands, trapped in the pool of water that is chin-height. He cannot drink it, though, for anytime he lowers his mouth to take a drink, the water recedes. The ancient Greeks knew the value of water, for Tantalus was sentenced to an eternal life of thirst, the most terrible punishment available. Hence, the word, tantalize.
The Romans depended on many shallow wells and springs before they built their first aqueduct in 312 BC. The soil was so rich in springs and underground streams that wells could be sunk successfully at any point, and the average depth necessary was only about 5 m. Such wells were common from the earliest period, of the Roman Empire Excavations in the Roman forum have uncovered more than 30 wells dating back to the Republic.
The drilling rather than digging of artesian wells in France and Italy began in the twelfth century and created considerable popular and scientific interest on the occurrence of underground water. The art of drilling and casing wells was actually invented, perfected, and extensively practiced by the ancient Chinese. They used bamboo poles and patience to penetrate hundreds of feet. Wells were started by the grandfather and completed by the grandson.
The most extraordinary works of ancient humans for collecting groundwater are the qanats and karezes of the Persians and Afghanies. The qanats and karezes are tunnels that connect the bottoms of shafts, which were dug by humans working as moles over long periods of time and are conspicuous over all the high central valleys of Iran. Thirty six of these tunnels supplied Teheran and the highly cultivated tributary agricultural area.
In ancient times, springs were considered the miraculous gifts of the gods; they wrought miracles and consequently were places where temples were built. These superstitions continue today with those who optimistically overestimate the therapeutic value of medicinal springs.
Prior to the latter part of the seventeenth century, it was generally assumed that the water discharged by the springs could not be derived from the rain, first because the rainfall was believed to be inadequate in quantity and second, because the Earth was believed to be too impervious to permit penetration of the rain water far below the surface. With these two erroneous postulates lightly assumed, the philosophers devoted their thought to devising ingenuous hypotheses to account in some other way for the spring and stream water.
Two main hypotheses were developed: one to the effect that sea water is conducted through subterranean channels below the mountains and is then purified and raised to the springs and the other to the effect that in the cold dark cavern under the mountains, the subterranean atmosphere and perhaps the Earth itself are condensed into the moisture. The sea water hypothesis gave rise to subsidiary ideas to explain how the sea water is freed from its salt and how it is elevated to the altitude of the springs. The removal of the salt was ascribed to processes of either naturally occurring distillation or filtration.
Beginning with the middle of the sixteenth until the close of the seventeenth century, numerous publications appeared that contained discussions of groundwater, but the two ancient or classic Greek hypotheses chiefly occupied the field, although an infiltration theory was explained in 1580 by Bernard Palissy. In the later part of the seventeenth century, Perrault, Mariotte, and Halley abandoned the theories of the past and actively undertook experimental work to determine the source and movements of groundwater, and thus was born the science of groundwater. Perrault made rainfall measurements during three years and roughly estimated the area of the drainage basin of the Seine River above a point in Burgundy and of the runoff from this same basin. He computed that the quantity of water that fell on the basin as rain or snow was about six times the quantity discharged by the river. Crude as his work was, he definitely demonstrated the fallacy of the old assumption of the inadequacy of the rainfall to account for the discharge of springs and streams.
Mariotte computed the discharge of the Seine at Paris by measuring its width, depth, and velocity at approximately its mean stage and by doing so verified Perrault's results. About the same time, Halley made crude tests of evaporation and demonstrated that the evaporation from the sea is sufficient to account for all the water supplied to the springs and streams, thus removing the need for any other mysterious subterranean channel to conduct the water from the ocean to the springs.
Centuries were required to free scientists from superstition and wild theories handed down from earlier generations regarding the unseen subsurface water. To a certain extent, we still live at a time when great misunderstanding if not superstition exist with regard to the occurrence and movement of groundwater. The elementary principle that gravity controls motions of water underground as well as at the surface is still not appreciated by all engaged in the development of the world's vast groundwater supplies.
Many people still believe that the magical forked witch stick is able to point to underground water streams and will actually twist in the hands of the operator in its endeavor to do so.
These popular superstitions are examples of the ability to believe without the foundation of facts, and this peculiar ability exists in the minds of both educated and uneducated men and women. Inasmuch as the movements of underground water cannot be observed at the surface, they have been subject to wild speculation. Even an American judge in a court case once ruled that “percolating water moves in a mysterious manner in courses unknown and unknowable.”
Little by little in the last decades of the twentieth century, groundwater hydrologists dragged the water supply fraternity and the public at large kicking and screaming into a twenty-first century. Now groundwater resources are appropriately valued as often the best hope for enabling society and commerce to move forward unhindered by water shortages. Forty-seven percent of the U.S. population now depends on groundwater for its drinking water. In the Asia-Pacific region, 32% of the population is groundwater dependent; in Europe, 75%; in Latin America, 29% and in Australia, 15%.
The authors of this book played their role of ardent enthusiastic scientists during this period battling ever-present opposition to belief that significant quantities of groundwater supply could be sustained. Although we approached success in our efforts, it was still a small victory as our intent has been to reveal to the world the vast quantities of groundwater yet hidden deep within the Earth, often beneath arid lands. Thus far, there has been little confidence in our conceptual model or paradigm.
We have long believed that a planet whose surface is covered by water should not be facing water shortages. Admittedly, 97% of the Earth's water is too salty for humans and agriculture, and glaciers and ice caps put another significant portion out of reach. But we have long believed that a significant portion thought to be out of reach under the ground is not.
Energy-intensive desalting of seawater is currently too expensive except in wealthy but dry areas near seacoasts. Our fresh surface water has been allocated in most of the developed world, with Canada being a rare exception.
Although humans have learned well over the past century to conserve water in such that water use per person has actually declined, the addition of the final two billion people on the planet in the next 40 years before its population stabilizes (in accordance with most sound demographic projections) will require considerable additional water supplies. If we fail to develop additional water supplies, international strife will remain. Half of our continental land lies within river basins shared by more than one country. Multinational water claims have not and likely will not provoke war, but local and regional conflicts have occurred over inequitable allocation and use of water resources. International diplomacy commonly encourages opposing countries to cooperate, but not always before lives are lost. Most recently, apartheid battles in South Africa in 1990, Iranian and Iraqi disputes in 1991, and intrastate conflicts in India in the mid 1990s cost thousands of lives.
There has been an explosive development of groundwater in several major deserts of the world in the last half of the twentieth century. Preliminary results of activity in the Sahara and throughout the Arabian Peninsula substantiate the occurrence of vast amounts of water stored beneath desert lands. This development is due to efforts of groundwater geologists and engineers, well construction crews, and political leaders who had the courage to launch the investigations against accepted water resources paradigms.
Several factors make water development programs in arid regions feasible:
The deserts offer uncrowded space
Favorable climate for nearly year-round crop growth
Large areas of reasonably good soils and food-fiber requirements for persons in mineral and petroleum resource industries in desert areas.
Throughout most of the world, aquifers have not been regarded as true water resource reservoirs. Rather, they are simply viewed as holding tanks for annual contributions of what is unfortunately thought of as safe yield. The annual increment of groundwater is skimmed off the top when the basin below is depleted in any significant way. But in fact, the surface-water reservoir that remains full is obviously as poorly managed as that which remains empty; so too is the groundwater reservoir poorly managed when it is not allowed to rise and fall in contrast to the vagaries of the natural cycle and the demands of the human population.
Good water management is the optimum manipulation of the available water resource to serve the greatest common good. It includes the coordination of both the natural aspects of the hydraulic cycle and every artificial operation that can be performed upon it, save, in most cases, the drastically expensive and uneconomic interbasin transfer of surface water.
The concept of the hydrologic cycle has become so generally accepted that it is difficult to appreciate the long history that lies back of its development and demonstration, from the dawn of history until comparatively recent times, barely a quarter of a century ago. The central concept in the science of hydrology is the hydrologic cycle, a convenient term to denote the circulation of the water from the sea, through the atmosphere, to the land and thence with numerous delays back to the sea by overland and underground routes and in part through re-evaporation and transpiration from vegetation, lakes, and streams. It involves the measurement of the quantities and rates of movement of water at all times and at every stage of its course through multiple reservoirs, from a height of 15 km above the ground to a depth of some 5 km beneath it. The reservoirs include atmospheric moisture, oceans, rivers, lakes, icecaps, soil, and groundwater. The transport mechanism from one physical state or aquifier to another is either gravity or solar energy over periods that range from hours to thousands of years.
The pioneer of intensive groundwater investigations was Germany's Adolph Theim who introduced field methods for making tests of the flow of groundwater and applied the laws of flow in developing water supplies. Under his influence, Germany became the leading country in supplying its cities with groundwater, and it still derives over 80% of its needs from wells.
Because we can see surface waters and because such tremendous amounts of money have been spent in building visible dams, levees, artificial reservoirs, aqueducts, and irrigation canals involving surface water, it is openly natural that we tend to think of that water as the major source of the world's needs. Actually less than 3% of unfrozen fresh water available at any given moment on our planet Earth occurs in streams and lakes. The other more than 97%, estimated at eight trillion acre-feet, is underground.
The total amount of water on our planet has almost certainly not changed since geological times. Water can be polluted, abused, and misused, but it is neither created nor destroyed; it only migrates.
Groundwater is tracked by remote sensing and tracer techniques, but the water movement is exceedingly difficult to follow. It is known that groundwater migrates slowly. Sometimes groundwater moves only a few millimeters a day, although occasionally it is a few meters per day. Near the water table, the average cycling time of water may be a year or less, whereas in deep aquifers, it may be as long as thousands of years. It is easier to measure water tables. Through test wells and controlled pumping, it is not difficult to measure the recharge rate and flow behavior around a particular site. The difficulty comes in sensing movement in the aquifer as a whole. Water can be stored in the pores of rocks, but it can also be stored in cracks and fractures, and sometimes these fissures can provide conduits to allow water to travel quickly and over great distances.
No one knows how many unexplored and unexploited aquifers exist, but the amount of water stored in them is thought to be considerable. This is the focus of this book, to help exploration geologists around the globe to uncover vast stores of water yet undiscovered. Water exploration companies have not yet made a major impact on the stock markets of developed countries, but they would not be a bad bet for adventurous investors.
Water exploration must tie itself to the many great advances made by the petroleum industry, which long ago tied itself to computer technology. The petroleum industries need for processing power is insatiable, and it has resulted in many computer technology advances. Today we stand on the launching pad to a journey into high technology groundwater location and development whose foundation has been laid for us through advances in petroleum and other mineral explorations. The oil industry itself has been a driving force in the computer industry where Texas Instruments began as a company in 1930 known as Geophysical Service. Seismic imaging now available for groundwater studies led to the development of computer programs to assess sound waves generated in rock to infer the nature and location of rock layers capable of trapping oil. From initial two-dimensional images, computers ultimately were taught to process gigabytes of data that would result in three-dimensional images.
In 1985, more than a day of computing time was required to analyze a square kilometer of subsurface structure; by 1995, computers could do it in 10 minutes, and the cost to survey 10 km2 dropped from millions of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.
Concurrently, computer-assisted drilling technology advances include saw drill bits that have direct sensing tools to evaluate physical channels, and electrical characteristics of what they were drilling through while transmitting their exact location to the surface and enabling the implementation of immediate course corrections. In some ways, it is truly amazing that this book is only being written at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Advances to be described in the following chapters regarding groundwater development were recognized in the parallel fields of geologic science and engineering, more than two decades ago. This is why, with the exception of water every mineral resource on Earth has become less and less expensive than it was in our youth. Technologic- and knowledge-based advances have reduced the costs of location, development, and refinement of every other mineral in the Earth, without exception.
Mines and oil fields once abandoned have been reopened for redevelopment of formerly uneconomic resources. Groundwater, however, has been saddled with a century old paradigm. We place a straw in only the upper portion of our water-filled glass (or aquifer) ignoring its deeper regions because of our inability to discern deeper rock structures. Or we are misguided by beliefs that recharge could not continuously replenish the deeper portions of that or any aquifer. So leave it there lest we become dependent on a nonrenewable resource. A similar philosophy would have left us in the Stone Age, never to develop an Iron Age or use any other minerals in the Earth's crust.
At the same time, commitments are being made by the United States and other governments that could severely damage independent efforts to discover the realities of deep groundwater environments. For example, in recent years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and similar agencies worldwide not only missed an ideal opportunity to advance the understanding of deep groundwater resources, but delayed its advancement by demanding instant competence of an unprepared scientific community. In addition, U.S. EPA spent billions of dollars on groundwater “cleanup” and “protection” without first performing the due diligence required to critically evaluate the actual knowledge base. The origins of this unfortunate situation are of recent vintage. In the 1980s, it was disconcerting for exploration scientists to observe the U.S. Congress balk at a request from the world's pre-eminent institution of basic geological research and knowledge, the U.S. Geological Survey, for modest funding to update decades-old, low-resolution, pre-space-age geological maps (upon which groundwater studies are usually based); and it was even more bewildering in the 1990s to witness Congress funding a multi-billion-dollar nationwide groundwater cleanup effort without benefit of the requisite knowledge base they failed to develop a decade before.
Spending those billions of dollars have not only failed to advance the knowledge base about deep groundwater, but also have induced a surfeit of numerical models largely based on anachronistic concepts of groundwater occurrence. Such elegant, but ill-conceived models have been combined with sophisticated computer visualization programs and published as factual representations of global groundwater occurrence in professional journals and the popular press, leading engineers, economists, and political leaders to premature and erroneous conclusions regarding groundwater balance and the Earth's fresh water balance as well.
2Megawatersheds—A New Paradigm
Alexander Raymond Love
Founding Executive Director, Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa
“The originator of a new concept … finds, as a rule, that it is much more difficult to find out why other people do not understand him than it was to discover the new truths.”
—Herman von Helmholtz
In 1875, a 17-year-old German student had just graduated from Gymnasium and was about to enter University. Intrigued with his early studies of physics, he had decided to pursue it as a career. He thus approached the head of the physics department at the university for advice. The professor was not encouraging. “Physics is a branch of knowledge that is just about complete. The important discoveries, all of them, have been made. It is hardly worth entering physics anymore.”
The attitude of the professor was probably representative of the prevailing wisdom in “Newtonian or Classical” physics in 1875. It represented a plateau of knowledge that had been reached in the nearly two centuries since the early discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton. Little did the professor realize that the field of physics was on the verge of a major new age of discovery and development, one that would reshape the study of physics and profoundly impact on world development.
The professor, of course, also had no way of knowing that the student, Max Planck, would ignore his advice and go on to become a world famous physicist. Planck would introduce the quantum theory and help usher in the new age of physics with the publication of his work on black body radiation at the beginning of the twentieth century. Albert Einstein, then 21 years old, would eventually build on Planck's work and further refine the quantum theory, eventually to supplement it with his new theory of relativity.
The quote by Herman von Helmholtz and the story of young Max Planck are both from Barbara Lovett Cline's 1965 book Men Who Made A New Physics. I have read the book many times and continue to marvel at the process of rapid technological change that took place over such a relatively short period of history. It was indeed a true paradigm shift. To a layman, it seems not so much that Newtonian physics was wrong, as it was incomplete. Physicists continued to find unexplained phenomenon and inconsistencies with classical physics. Pursuit of these questions eventually opened new fields of opportunity in physics.
There are two key themes embodied in these excerpts from Cline's book that are pertinent to the telling of the story on megawatersheds. The first is reflected in the story of Max Planck. Here we see a leading expert in a field of technology, the professor of physics, defending the status quo base of knowledge and rejecting the hypothesis that new discoveries might usher in a new era. In this book, the reader will encounter numerous examples of this principle. In many cases, this inherent resistance to change has led to erroneous assessments of water availability and flawed investment decisions or recommendations. This was graphically illustrated in the cases of the Trinidad and Tobago water development programs discussed in Chapters 5 and 6.
More importantly, however, the general failure of the world at large to take advantage of the potential of the new megawatershed technology has curtailed the development of additional available water resources. This failure can have major economic, political, and developmental implications for future development of our world's water resources.
The second principle is closely related and is reflected in von Helmholtz's quote. It reflects his apparent frustration with the difficulty of convincing his colleagues of the validity of his new discoveries. Such is the case with the megawatershed paradigm. Skepticism remains strong among members of the technical community. This contributes to hesitation associated with risk aversion among technical experts, investors, and public bureaucrats alike. This book attempts to address these concerns in two ways. First, the telling of the successful case studies such as Sudan, Trinidad and Tobago, Somalia, and so on, serve to help prove the principles of megawatersheds by real-world example. Secondly the book discusses and illustrates how risk-sharing models can be used to shift the risk to technically knowledgeable entrepreneurial investors who operate in a different risk/benefit framework than the public sector. Both approaches must be followed if scepticism is to be overcome and a more rapid application of the megawatershed concept is to be achieved.
Global Implications
The premise of this book is that the megawatershed model can open up access to substantial quantities of water either not known to exist or thought to be fossil, nonrenewable, or inaccessible. In the introduction to this book, Robert Bisson indicates from results of several case studies that “ten times more fresh water than previously calculated may be in active groundwater circulation under drought plagued cities and villages across America, Asia, and Africa.” To put this contention in perspective, we will review the global distribution of water availability. Most, of course, is in the oceans: 1.33 trillion km3 or 96.5%. With an additional nearly 1% in saline/brackish groundwater or salt-water lakes [Shiklomanov, 1993]. Only 2.5% or 35 million km3 is fresh water, and 70% of this is tied up in glaciers and permanent snow cover. Fresh groundwater accounts for 10.5 million km3 or the bulk of the balance. This far exceeds the 0.091 million km3 in freshwater lakes and the 2.1 million km3 in rivers.
Given the relative magnitude of these figures, it seems apparent that any technological advance that offers greater access to the predominant source of fresh water (groundwater) should be welcomed with open arms. But the real significance probably lies in local application of the megawatershed principles in those locations where the economic and environmental costs of traditional technology and documented water availability fail to meet the needs of the local population. The case examples in this book highlight a number of such instances.
There are a number of overlapping themes woven throughout these case studies that can be reviewed as a prelude to the review of the cases themselves. They are as follows:
Megawatersheds and Economic Development: The Millennium
Development Goals
Megawatersheds and Food Production
Megawatersheds and Environmental Needs
Megawatersheds and the Water Needs of Refugees and Drought
Victims
Megawatersheds and Commercial/Industrial Use
Megawatersheds and International Political Challenges Megawatersheds, Skepticism, and Risk Reduction
Finally, it is the review on increasing the application of the megawatershed concept to address some of the world's looming water shortages.
Megawatersheds and Economic Development: The Millennium Development Goals
The concept of megawatersheds, of course, applies to all of the inhabited continents of the Earth and many small island states, developed and underdeveloped (SIDS). However, the major unmet needs for water supply are in the developing world. It is there that both the quantity and quality of water supply are most inadequate and the cost of large surface water development schemes is prohibitive. A good place to start the analysis of water's key role in development is with the existing global compact for development reached at the United Nations. The UN millennium Declaration, “Development and Poverty Eradication,” approved in 2000, set forth 8 development goals and 18 specific targets to be achieved by 2015. A number of these are directly related to adequate water supply. Access to clean water and sanitation is at the top of the list. But water is also key to the goals of reducing poverty and hunger by 2015 because of its critical role in agriculture and agriculture's key role in poverty reduction. Water is also critical to achieving overall goals in the environmental arena. Related goals in the health area such as reducing infant and child mortality are further dependent on water supply.
Drought and famine were not specifically targeted in the Millennium compact. However, drought and famine will require new approaches for providing water to drought victims and refugees. Ewan Anderson points this out elsewhere in this book. The UN and the development community have been negligent in not directly including elimination of manmade and natural disasters as key objectives in the overall program to reduce poverty. Such exclusion belies the reality of the development challenge in areas like Afghanistan and Sub-Saharan Africa today.
The UN has also declared access to water to be both a “right” and a “basic need”: “The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights.”
It is clear from the UN documentation and related studies that water is critical to achieving many of the agreed economic and social objectives in the Developing World. Yet, as the World Panel on Financing Water Infrastructure points out “water has been underemphasized and neglected in the past, compared to other sectors.” “The costs of neglect… are cumulative,” as the report rightly points out. The panel's report “Financing Water for All” provides a comprehensive look at the challenges to financing water projects. It does not attempt to address new technological approaches to overcoming drinking water shortages. It does, however, provide a good overview of who owns, who manages, and who finances water systems. This perspective is of great importance to the discussion of megawatershed technology and the associated concept of risk reduction discussed later.
In this framework, the introduction of a new technical approach, e.g., the megawatershed concept, can have a far-reaching impact on a developing country's progress in reducing poverty, improving health, preserving the environment, and contributing to new approaches for dealing with drought and refugees.
A compelling argument exists today for moving megawatershed's exploration up on the priority list on the world's development agenda. In the following sections, we will touch on some of these specific development challenges in more detail.
Megawatersheds and Food Production
In 2002, the International Food Policy Institute and the International Water Management Institute published a comprehensive volume entitled World Water and Food to 2025, which analyzes the challenges to international food security posed by competition for water sources and water scarcity. The first chapter sets the stage for the premise of the book by stating, “The story of food security in the 21st century is likely to be closely linked to the story of water security. In coming decades, the world's farmers will need to produce enough food to feed many millions more people, yet there are virtually no untapped, cost-effective sources of water for them to draw on as they face this challenge. Moreover, farmers will face heavy competition for this water from households, industries, and environmentalists.” (Emphasis added.)
The book highlights the fact that nearly 250 million hectares of land are under irrigation today, five times the amount under irrigation at the beginning of the twentieth century. Moreover, much of the successful increases in food production were associated with the technological breakthroughs in plant technology that came to be known as the Green Revolution. It is well to remember that the achievements of the Green Revolution were closely associated with the increase in irrigation as well as the increased use of fertilizers. But the Green Revolution has had much less success in the arid and semi-arid areas of Asia and Africa where many of the world's poorest and most malnourished people or citizens reside. Irrigated agriculture uses 80% of global water supply and 86% of developing country water [IFPRI].
J.A. Allen in his book, The Middle East Water Question/Hydropolitics and the Global Economy, highlights this heavy demand for food production by comparing the components of individual water use per year:
Drinking: 1 m
3
per year
Other domestic uses: 50 to 100 m
3
per year
Embedded in food: 1000 m
3
per year, either from naturally occurring soil water or from irrigation systems.
The pursuit of greater food production will thus be closely associated with the competition for water. Already it is clear that major new infrastructure projects, such as storage dams, will be subject to greater scrutiny and in some cases blocked from implementation, as happened with the proposed dam on the White Nile in 2003. Moreover, existing irrigation schemes are subject to waterlogging and salinity problems that require costly new drainage schemes to maintain production levels. Rapid urbanization is adding to the competition with agriculture for water. The environmental community is actively competing for water to support “environmental” needs, including the maintenance of wetlands, natural forest reserves, aquatic species, and so on.
What does the megawatershed paradigm offer to meet this challenge? First, there is a need to better understand the character of groundwater resources in areas already irrigated with groundwater. In many cases, megawatershed principles could help better understand the source, character, and sustainability of existing systems and allow more effective long-term use. Secondly, there are major known aquifers (e.g., North Africa's Nubian Sandstones) that are underutilized because of the prevailing “fossil” groundwater model that does not recognize active recharge to these vast groundwater systems. A better understanding of these aquifers might open up new resources that would help minimize competition with agriculture. Third, much of the problem in food security centers on the populations in arid and semi-arid areas. The inability to generate income from erratic agriculture as well as food shortage is at the root of the problem. Supplemental water from new strategically developed megawatersheds could help meet food needs, especially during periods of drought when crops fail. This is closely related to drought/refugee issues. It is also closely related to the complex factors that motivate urban migration, e.g., the lack of adequate income opportunities in rural areas where agriculture and related off-farm employment have declined.
Afghanistan presents a promising case study on the application of megawatershed theory to increase agriculture development. Traditionally, the Afghans have tapped surface water and shallow aquifers to supplement rain-fed agriculture. The use of traditional kerezes attests to the commitment and ingenuity of the Afghans in searching for additional agriculture water. The kerezes are ingenious tunnel systems extending into the mountains to tap groundwater sources, some of which are reportedly 20 miles long.
Today, amidst the devastation of decades of war, restoring agriculture has become a top priority; water supply from traditional groundwater sources is proving inadequate, and new sources must be found. The heavily faulted, fractured, and mountainous physiography and high-elevation snow pack and precipitation of Afghanistan provides conditions conducive to locating substantial additional groundwater through the application of megawatershed technology.
Discussions are currently underway regarding the initiation of a countrywide megawatershed assessment of Afghanistan to locate large sources of additional groundwater.
Before we leave the subject of food production, let us take another look at the phenomenon called the “Green Revolution.” The phrase Green Revolution refers to the breakthrough in agriculture that took place in the 1960s. At that time, the major agriculture research stations at Los Banos in the Philippines, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico developed new high-yielding varieties of rice, wheat, and maize. These three cereal crops are the basic food staples for a large percentage of the world's population. This is especially true in the developing world. Before the technological breakthrough, there was a growing consensus that the world's burgeoning population would outstrip food production in a Few decades and growing famine would follow.
The development of new cereal varieties associated with improvements in fertilizer use, pesticides, and water control ushered in a true paradigm shift in the world's food production. Today, nearly 40 years later, the world still produces enough food for a substantially larger population. Famines in South Asia are no longer a common occurrence. In most cases, hunger in today's world is a function of food distribution and lack of economic purchasing power. The exceptions relate to droughts and refugee problems, which are discussed later.
There are some key observations related to the Green Revolution that bear on the discussion of the megawatershed potential. First, there would certainly not have been a Green Revolution in the 1960s was it not for the foresight of pioneers in the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations who funded the initial research stations as a public need and a potential public good. The individual researchers would never have achieved their breakthroughs without foundation help. The foundation role emphasizes the potential key role for public support for research to help accelerate development and adoption of new technology. In the case of early megawatershed research and development, the funding came from public and private sources such as USAID, British Petroleum, and private investors. More support is badly needed to help accelerate the adoption of the megawatershed concept on a broader scale, as we will discuss further at the end of this chapter.
Second, the Green Revolution technology was highly dependent on the availability of adequate, controlled water sources. The explosion in use of water for irrigation, highlighted in the IFPRI study, is partially due to this basic requirement. The Green Revolution, therefore, has greatly added to the pressure on the world's water resources. Much of the agriculture research in the large Consultative Group for International Research (CGIAR) network of research stations is focused on the problem of increasing food production in the face of water shortages. Dryland crop research on sorghum, millet, and other arid climate crops continues, but with far less promising results. Work is also being done with growing crops such as rice in brackish water conditions. The fact remains, however, that the major beneficiaries of the Green Revolution are concentrated in areas with adequate water resources, either from rainfall or water control systems. The application of the megawatershed principals may help make the application of new technologies, including biotechnology, feasible in arid regions (e.g. Somalia and Sudan) and erratic or heavily polluted rainfall runoff in high rainfall areas such as Trinidad and Tobago, providing year-round clean water for domestic use and food production.
Megawatersheds and Environmental Needs
There are a number of areas where the megawatershed concept and broad environmental concerns interface. We will touch on two of the key targets included in the UN Millennium Declaration, both of which are included under development goal No. 7, “Ensure Environmental Sustainability.” The two targets are No. 9, “Integrate the principles of sustainable development… and reverse the loss of environmental resources” and No. 10, “Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.”
Target 9, megawatershed's contribution to preserving the natural environment, and the related issue of preserving biodiversity, are well illustrated in this book. In the case of Tobago, there was a determination by one of the world's leading engineering firms, using traditional hydrogeological methods, that there was no prospect of developing adequate water supply on Tobago through groundwater development. The only viable option presented was to dam the Richmond River in the Western Hemisphere's oldest protected natural rain forest. This park is the oldest natural preserve in the Caribbean and a source of important biodiversity. Developing the dam would have substantially impacted this reserve. An important related aspect is that the cost of the dam was substantial at $60 million. The development period was six years. The best water scientists in the world had spoken based on existing groundwater models and technologies.
Enter the megawatershed concept. As Chapter 5 demonstrates, the same quantity of water was developed and eight times more water was identified in one year than would have been possible even with full development of the dam in six to eight years, and the megawatershed development approach cost one-tenth as much as the dam with no adverse environmental impact. A bonus was the fact that the megawatershed approach allowed for private sector participation and financing. The dam as planned would have required all public financing.
In the context of this chapter, it is important to address Southern Africa, which was also extensively surveyed by Bisson and his team in the 1980s and 1990s, but it is not included as a full case study elsewhere in the book. The first regional deep groundwater study of Botswana and South Africa was undertaken by Bisson's firm BCI-Geonetics under contract with British Petroleum Southern Africa (BPSA) in 1985, followed by privately financed investigations of Zimbabwe and Mozambique and a USTDA-supported geophysical survey of the Sabe River Basin. In 1992, USAID engaged Bisson Exploration Services Company to assist the Agency in building a drought management strategy by following up on prior megawatershed's projects in Botswana. All three studies have regional implications for all of the SADCC states.
In these novel studies, attention was given to regional hydrological implications of underlying geological structure in Southern Africa as related to its major river systems, from the trans-African Zambezi to the Okavango and its remarkable desert delta. The Okavango Delta is one of the world's best known and loved wildlife preserves. Yet it is one of the few sources of fresh water in a country that is essentially a desert, albeit rich with diamonds. Many eyes are on the Okavango water. The delta catchment basin covers three countries: Angola, Namibia, and Botswana. Nearly 95% of the river inflows originate in Angola through the Okavango's two main tributaries, the Cubango and the Cuito rivers. Annual surface recharge to the Okavango Delta from Angola's Highland rains exceeds 10 billion m3, with another 6 billion m3
