WaterWired

Manual Water Well Drilling and Lots More: The EMAS Concept

At the recently concluded HWB BoD retreat we occasionally wandered away from vision and mission statements and 'lapsed' into discussions about water well drilling methods in remote areas of emerging regions.

One of the problems faced in such areas - especially mountainous terrain - is the lack of access for motorized well drilling rigs and the lack of supporting supplies (drilling mud, cement, gasoline, etc.). So what should be done, especially if surface water is not an option?

Manual well-drilling rigs are a potential solution. I can see some of my well-drilling friends cringing,

Last 31 July I posted about two manual water well drilling methods: the BYU method and the Terry Waller method or so-called 'Baptist' method. During our retreat John Cherry brought another one to my attention: that developed by Wolfgang E. Buchner in Bolivia. In fact, Buchner has developed more than a drilling method but a system - EMAS, a Mobile School for Water and Sanitation:

EMAS [Spanish acronym] is a Mobile School for Water and Sanitation based in Bolivia, and run by Wolfgang Eloy Buchner. EMAS is also a whole technical and social concept of water and sanitation which includes manual drilling, rain water harvesting, solar water heaters, wind power, hydraulic rams, water treatment, small tanks and sinks, a variety of hand and foot pumps, and ferrocement water storage tanks.

More movies are available in the second EMAS channel: vimeo.com/channels/emas2.

More information at emas-international.de
This channel was developed in cooperation with Akvo.org

Here is a video introducing EMAS:

This movie gives an overview of all the technologies used in the EMAS concept: manual well drilling, hand-powered water pumps, pedal-powered water pumps, windmills, ferrocement tanks, spring catchment, latrines, solar heating, drip irrigation, hydraulic ram.

 

Buchner has about 20 years' experience with this approach. Those of us at the HWB retreat felt that this is an approach we need to learn more about.

Be sure to visit the vimeo site to view more videos.

"Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity." - Arnold Bennett

Heartland Institute Twofer: 1) Billboard Bozos; 2) Dr. Jay Lehr's Rant: Let's Phase Out EPA

1) Heartland Institute created somewhat of a kerfuffle by over-the-top billboards it posted in Chicago. This one was taken down after 24 hours:

2) Dr. Jay H. Lehr, the nation's first PhD in hydrology (yeah, we're both UA grads), former executive director of the National Ground Water Association and now HI's Science Director, opines about EPA. Listen to it here. No comment.

Wonder if Jay's efforts will be featured in the UA HWR news? Yeah, right - and the icecaps are melting, too!

Can't wait for his policy paper on the EPA!

Smart guy, but c'mon, man!

Note added on 8 May 2012: Since Lehr is advocating the elimination of the EPA, in the interests of full disclosure, it should be noted that in 1991, Lehr, after resigning as executive director of the National Water Well Association (now the National Ground Water Association), pleaded guilty to authorizing overcharges of $101,000 (by falsifying employee timesheets) to an EPA contract while he served as NWWA's ED. He and former Finance Director Keith Lelux were fined and sentenced to six months in prison, which they both served.

This information was taken from: Swanson, Kenneth R., 1999. National Ground Water Association: The First Fifty Years, 1948-1998, p. 157.  

"The whole (global warming) thing is created to destroy America's free enterprise system and our economic stability." -- Jerry Falwell

Phil Isenberg: California Bumps Up Against Hard Facts: Water and the Delta

This morning I received an email with this in the subject line: "NAS Report on Bay-Delta -- comments by Phil Isenberg". "Hmmm..." I said. I served on the committee. [Self-serving warning!]

When I opened the Word document I saw that it was a speech given by Isenberg, Chair of the Delta Stewardship Council, to the California Water Law and Policy Conference on 20 April 2012.

Here is what greeted me as I started reading: 

California bumps up against hard facts:  Water and the Delta  

Let us start with a quiz:  Take out your pens and jot down the name of groups, associations or individuals who recently said the following controversial things about California water policy and the Delta:

• “…the future will require planning and management that specifically acknowledge and take into account that there is not enough water to meet all desired uses in California with the required degree of reliability everywhere and all the time.”  (NRC 2012, p. 32)   

• “The fact of water scarcity does not mean that the state is ‘running out of water.’  Although most surface flows have been fully allocated or over-allocated, the state  can use a number of tools that optimize the use of existing supplies.” (NRC 2012, p. 38)

• “The historic strategy of developing storage and conveyance facilities in response to growth in water demand is being replaced with a variety of supply and demand-management alternatives, including conservation…”  (NRC 2012, pp. 31-32)

• “…the Delta as it was before large-scale alteration by humans (before about 1880) cannot be recovered.” (NRC 2012, p. 152) 

• When speaking of the Delta, “Consideration of the large number of stressors and their effects and interactions leads to the conclusion that efforts to eliminate any one stressor are unlikely to reverse declines in the listed species.”  (NRC 2012, p. 8)

• “Given the diverse set of organisms and processes that constitute the Delta ecosystem, the ultimate success of any approach targeted to particular species seems doubtful.”  (NRC 2012, p. 6)  Italics added. 

Who said all these things?  Who would dare to claim that our water supply is scarce, and that we cannot save every endangered species in the Delta?  Well, it was that bunch of high-flying scientists from the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academies of Science, Medicine and Engineering. Seventeen of them --- talented and well respected --- with scientific, engineering, legal and water and ecosystem management backgrounds, who issued their report [Note: Sustainable Water and Environmental Management in the California Bay-Delta] a month ago.

 Ironically, elected officials from California asked these smart scientists to get involved, in hopes they would answer the question: “How can we get out of this water/Delta mess?”

 ‘Be careful what you ask for” goes the old adage, ‘you may get it!’

 These scientists managed to turn the tables on us.  They refused the invitation to pick sides and declare one side the winner.  Instead, they tell us what we need know; but not what we want to hear.

I am still speechless. Thanks for the kind words, Phil.

Lots of work ahead.

You can read Isenberg's entire speech here:

Download Isenberg_20April2012_Speech_CA_Water_Law

The last two sentences:

"In a better world, environmentalists would talk like John Hart, and water users would talk like the National Research Council. If that starts to happen, maybe we will survive as a society." - Phil Isenberg

What Do We Talk About Most? Word Count Analysis: AWRA's GIS Conference Papers

This 'word count analysis' is from some papers and abstracts in AWRA's recent GIS and Water Resources VII Spring Specialty Conference Proceedings.

Click on the graphic to enlarge. 

From Stephen Bourne at Atkins Global.

As Steve noted, NHDPlus is the 6^th most often mentioned word. WTF?

Fascinating. 

"We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out." - Winston Churchill

Video: The Mpemba Effect and Other Water Mysteries

Found out about this video by Vsauce from the March 2012 AWRA Newsletter.

The Mpemba Effect? I never knew it had a formal name.

By the way, the video got the distribution of groundwater vs. surface water correct.

 

Here are the videos by wheezywaiter and Strawburry17 showing their trips to India.

"Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness." - George Santayana