So, how do you refill an aquifer?
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So, how do you refill an aquifer?
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Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#2Permeable pavement sounds interesting, and I wonder how safe it is (the bottom of the fractional-distillation barrel might have fewer volatiles but do we want more surface area of the stuff to come into contact with water?) and how quickly it gets clogged.
Also, beavers: they're great at slowing the flow of water across a landscape, giving the water time to recharge aquifers. We'll need to address how we use land, though, to make room for these engineers to do their thing.
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#3Requiring farms to have ponds/wells could be a way to create a distributed solution.
Joel Salatin has been teaching about the value of ponds for decades now. for example here's a video of him talking about ponds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o82ar51eIsE
This will require the water boards to rethink things like not allowing capture of rainwater/flow.
The evaporation of ponds becomes somewhere else's rainwater (potentially further inland creating a virtuous cycle). And you can use depth to control the capture vs evaporation ratio -- deeper ponds evaporate slower and hold more precipitation.
But this all goes against our very reductionistic thinking -- this quarter section is for corn, nothing else.
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#4Albuquerque has been doing this since 2007.
“More ambitiously, however, the Water Authority in 2007 initiated a pilot program for aquifer storage and recovery, in which a small amount of San Juan-Chama water was released into the Bear Canyon arroyo and tracked to see if it reached the aquifer. Results were positive, and the Water Authority is moving forward with plans to recharge the aquifer on a larger scale.
We will be using direct injection as well as infiltration to get the water into the aquifer. We hope to put up to 40,000 acre-feet back into the aquifer in the first couple of years. After that, we will continue to add purified San Juan-Chama water to the aquifer primarily during winter months when demand is low.“
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#5I very much enjoy this type of article or videos on similar subjects. Another source that has been very entertaining / educational for me is "Practical Engineering" Youtube channel.
Looked it up and there's a great video from him about wells & aquifers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG19b06NG_w
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#6CA is on a very short fuse to do this, since there's all that snow from the winter that's melting or about to. I've been wondering about that myself.
What I would like to see is the gross numbers: what percent of this year's precipitation is going to flow into the ocean? Anyone?
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#7Requiring farms to have ponds/wells could be a way to create a distributed solution. Joel Salatin has been teaching about the value of ponds for decades now. for example here's a video of him talking about ponds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o82ar51eIsE This will require the water boards to rethink things like not allowing capture of rainwater/flow. The evaporation of ponds becomes somewhere else's rainwater (poten…
Owning property with a pond has it's own issues. In many of those farms run off can be detrimental. We have a 3/4 an acre pond and while we don't farm anywhere near it, the few springs that feed it all touch a lot of farm lands. So far we're lucky, but just a quarter mile down the road, our neighbors have a pond that won't sustain life, which we suspect is due to runoff from their crops.
There's also the issue of excess evaporation and creating unusable land. There's solutions out there but they're not all cut and dry with just placing ponds.
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#8CA is on a very short fuse to do this, since there's all that snow from the winter that's melting or about to. I've been wondering about that myself. What I would like to see is the gross numbers: what percent of this year's precipitation is going to flow into the ocean? Anyone?
Given that all the snow at Tahoe will flow into Truckee river and evaporate in Nevada... Can't imagine it's that high a percentage, to be honest.
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#9Some projects are pumping CO2 underground to reduce global warming. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Maybe we could use some of that money and equipment, to pump water underground!
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#10Some projects are pumping CO2 underground to reduce global warming. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Maybe we could use some of that money and equipment, to pump water underground!
The greenhouse coefficient of water vapour is, pound-for-pound, about one hundredth that of CO2.
There's also no meaningful amount of water that can be sequestered, given there's about 10^18 tonnes of it in the world's oceans.