[HN Gopher] So, how do you refill an aquifer?
___________________________________________________________________
So, how do you refill an aquifer?
Author : Hooke
Score : 87 points
Date : 2023-05-15 16:37 UTC (1 days ago)
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| AlbertCory wrote:
| CA 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?
| nawgz wrote:
| 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.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Snowpack is a huge deal in California, as around 30% of the
| state's water comes from snowmelt in the Sierras. They don't
| track it for funsies:
| https://cdec.water.ca.gov/snowapp/sweq.action
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Thanks. Is there an aggregate number CA somewhere?
|
| "CA" == amount of precipitation remaining in California, in
| one form or another.
|
| i.e. CA = total - ocean - NV - AZ - OR - evaporation -
| other
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The Sierra nevada mountain range has two sides. The vast
| majority of snowmelt runs downhill into California.
|
| The is more to the mountain range than Tahoe and more to the
| river system than the Truckee.
|
| You can take a look at the California river system to get a
| sense of this.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_California#/.
| ..
|
| Not many rivers flow east and the truckee is failrly small.
|
| The annual flow from the Truckee is 303,240 acre-feet, which
| is about %1 of the Sacramento river
| m_antis89 wrote:
| Well - I refill an aquifier very simply so because I don't refill
| them.
| maCDzP wrote:
| This is pretty common where I live. We take water from the river
| and replenish the aquifers.
|
| Why do it manually you ask? We have thick layer of impermeable
| dirt that prevents natural infiltration.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| Some regions in India with wet and dry seasons have been
| successfully doing this for some time now. Interestingly, the
| very high precipitation during the wet season allowed them to
| achieve improvement without megaprojects, instead focusing on
| outreach campaigns to teach many small farmers to build recharge
| wells and water slowing features (frequent small dams) on runoff
| streams on their land to foster ground absorption during the wet
| season.
| hosh wrote:
| Slowing down water is the key and there are many design
| patterns that achieve this. You don't even need to build
| structures (like when we envision with the word "dam").
|
| Even digging a small trench that follows contours in the upland
| helps water infiltrate into the ground. The dirt you dig out
| can be piled up as a bearm.
|
| The permaculture community the world over has been putting
| these design patterns for decades now, and they drew from ideas
| found in pre-modern societies.
|
| Brad Lancaster wrote an excellent multi-volume book about water
| harvesting structures, including taking into account erosion
| and silt deposit patterns, and working with plants. He calls it
| "planting the rain".
|
| It doesn't have to be in places with wet and dry seasons. In
| much of temperate climates of the US, beavers modified the flow
| of the rivers such that the surface water was able to meander a
| much greater surface than the main flow of the river. It
| supported the trees and vegetation, which in turn formed
| habitat.
| modriano wrote:
| I came across an excellent permaculture YouTuber (who is also
| a professor at Oregon State (I think) and is incredible at
| drawing diagrams) [0].
|
| Incidentally, based on his videos on the power of plants to
| filter out things as toxic as heavy metals and some
| biological wastes [1], I'm very concerned that the "injection
| well" idea for filling aquifers could result in contaminating
| the aquifer. Filtering through earth and active ecosystems
| seems like an important step in recharging aquifers safely.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/7fFXJ3G49pY
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/f-sRcVkZ9yg
| hosh wrote:
| Andrew Millison! He used live out in Arizona and did
| projects out here before being enticed to Oregon. The story
| I heard is that someone wanted him to teach out in Oregon
| badly enough to arrange for teaching at Oregon State.
|
| OSU and the Prescott College (here in AZ) are one of the
| few places teaching permaculture design at a college level.
|
| Millison also did a series of video on the Indian water
| crisis and how they used permaculture design to transform
| wastelands into productive habitats.
| Throw73849 wrote:
| Some 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!
| vkou wrote:
| 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.
| Throw73849 wrote:
| It may be still more efficient to pump water underground.
| Isolating CO2 is very energy intensive, for the same amount
| of energy we may isolate 100x more H2O. Sometimes it even
| condenses spontaneously!
|
| There is also huge amount of natural CO2, single vulcano
| eruption... It is about reducing green house gas emissions
| generated by humans. And there are many artificial lakes,
| fields and forests that generate huge footprint on water
| vapour..
| qzw wrote:
| Clippy: It looks like you're trying to turn Earth into
| Arrakis. Would you like some help with that?
|
| More seriously though, as the effects of climate change
| intensify, I think it's all but inevitable we'll have to
| seriously look at manipulating whatever environmental
| factors we can in order to counteract the worst of them.
| Maybe we can't do much about the sea level rise, but maybe
| it would be possible to moderate storm and drought/flooding
| intensities. As you pointed out, water vapor levels may be
| one of the easier things we could manipulate, as least on a
| local or regional scale.
| somat wrote:
| My understanding is it is the other way around, that in equal
| concentrations water vapor has a much stronger greenhouse
| effect than carbon dioxide. However for physics reasons the
| atmosphere does not hold much water vapor.
|
| In fact if I understand correctly this is the mechanism for a
| runaway greenhouse, that is, something like what happened to
| venus. Warmer temps allow for more water vapor in the
| atmosphere, due to it being such a good greenhouse gas, temps
| then build out of control as more and more water is
| vaporized.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Role_of_water_v.
| ..
| vkou wrote:
| > However for physics reasons the atmosphere does not hold
| much water vapor.
|
| The atmosphere is currently ~422 ppm of CO2, and an average
| of ~5,000 ppm of H2O, with humid tropical areas having up
| to ~50,000 ppm of H2O.
|
| Water vapour makes up ~half of the greenhouse effect. It's
| not a 'good' greenhouse gas, it's just that it's very
| unevenly distributed, with a strong bias towards having a
| _lot_ of it in the parts of the world that get a lot of sun
| - the tropics.
| somat wrote:
| I am definitely not an expert on the subject. But doing
| some basic web searches and I note how much more of the
| infrared spectra is absorbed by water vs the relatively
| narrow band that co2 absorbs. As a infrared emission
| blocking gas water vapor is several times more effective
| than co2. this is fine, we don't want earth to be a
| freezing ice cube. but add the excessive amounts of co2
| and you start to get an alarming condition.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Water vapour is a greenhouse gas but, confusingly, clouds can
| have either cooling or warming effects. The interactions are
| pretty complex.
| nvahalik wrote:
| > clouds can have either cooling or warming effects
|
| Just in case anyone is wondering... one of the simplest
| interactions has to do with daytime and nighttime cloud
| cover.
|
| Daytime cloud cover causes shade, which _can_ lower temps
| below the clouds. At night, heat from the ground radiates up
| and clouds can block the radiated heat. This is why cloudless
| nights during winter are colder, and cloudy summer nights can
| be stifling.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The amount of water in the air is almost impossible to change
| because the evaporation and condensation keep the balance
| "constant". It actually depends on the average temperature and
| other factors so it's not a real "constant", but unless it's
| possible to cover all the seas it's impossible to reduce it.
|
| The amount of CO2 changes more slowly, plants and cyanobacteria
| and some minerals absorb it, but it's a slow process. Natural
| decomposition, fires and fossil fuel power plants release it,
| but it's a slow process.
|
| So it's easy to modify the CO2 amount in either direction.
| Burning fossil fuel to produce energy makes a lot of money.
| Carbon capture requires a lot of money. So you can guess which
| one is wining now.
| walleeee wrote:
| While initiatives like these are important, it is also critical
| to rethink agricultural practice. California grows a number of
| thirsty crops under conditions which make little ecological
| sense. Reform must address the legal framework, incentives for
| farmers, and consumer habits and expectations upstream, as it
| were.
| 0ct4via wrote:
| https://archive.is/R7KQU
| ajb wrote:
| This remind me of Aubrey Jaffer's story about his father making
| 'disposal wells' in Miami:
| https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Wells Because a lot of land
| got paved over, it was easily flooded, as the water couldn't make
| its way into the aquifer. Jaffer senior had a business digging
| wells, and discovered that they could also suck down the water in
| a flooded carpark, so added making plugholes for carparks to his
| business.
|
| Although in theory this replenishes the aquifer, I'm not sure
| that water off a carpark floor is these days considered clean
| enough to inject into the aquifer. I think I read somewhere that
| a lot of these injection wells had to be plugged, but now I can't
| find that.
| mrbgty wrote:
| Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense to send water directly
| down a hole without getting filtered at all through layers of
| earth.
| Dig1t wrote:
| For further reading on aquifers I highly recommend
| https://www.edwardsaquifer.net
|
| It's run by a scientist in Texas and has an amazing wealth of
| information on the aquifers of Texas. I never thought I would
| find a subject like this interesting until I read this guy's
| site.
|
| Texas has been managing aquifers for a long time, there's a rich
| history behind their management, and reading about this stuff has
| been the only way I've found to make geology interesting. Many of
| the lessons learned and policies employed in Texas likely would
| be very useful in California.
| EdJiang wrote:
| There's also this guy who purchased a plot of land in the
| middle of nowhere, West Texas who's trying to terraform it into
| a forest.
|
| No idea how feasible it is, but interesting to watch!
| https://www.youtube.com/@dustupstexas
| [deleted]
| mech422 wrote:
| Phoenix is the same way. They do a really good job managing
| water supplies - for aquifers in particular (PHX sits on top of
| an underground lake) they use huge 'ponds' to let the water
| soak back into the aquifer.
| toss1 wrote:
| >> They do a really good job managing water supplies - for
| aquifers in particular
|
| Yes, except for some very bad deals allowing great tracts of
| land to be sold and leased at below-market rates to Saudi
| companies without charging or monitoring water use. They grow
| forage crops like alfalfa that are banned or restricted in
| Saudi because of excessive water requirements, and ship the
| crops back to their cattle there. It has made neighbors'
| wells run dry. They are effectively taking the water from the
| aquifer and shipping back to Saudi. For free. One of many
| articles here [0] (guess which political party made the
| deals).
|
| [0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-drought-
| stricken-ar...
| hosh wrote:
| We have to. Arizona is at the bottom of the water rights
| agreement among the states drawing from the Colorado River. I
| see a lot of water harvesting structures here, often in the
| form of parks and greenways.
| genmud wrote:
| That's actually not true, IIRC per capita we are actually
| better off than California and Nevada.
|
| Edit: Just looked it up and california gets about 5 million
| acre feet (maf), AZ gets about 2.8maf and Nevada only gets
| 0.3maf.
|
| So per capita, AZ is doing pretty well allocation-wise.
| hosh wrote:
| When I said, "bottom of the water rights" means that the
| other states has senior water rights, not allocation per
| capita.
|
| California currently gets about 4.4 maf, which is 1/3rd
| the flow. Depending on sources, they have senior water
| rights.
|
| (Complicating this is that various tribal nations have
| water rights senior to the states, and it is only now
| affecting allocations)
| SECProto wrote:
| "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi, though near-future
| speculative fiction, gives a pretty solid explanation of
| the issues. Junior rights don't matter much when there
| isn't enough water
| russellbeattie wrote:
| I think we should dig the California viaduct deeper. Make it one
| long lake. Or dig giant water holes all along it. All the excess
| water can just fill up the holes along its 700 mile length. No
| idea if it's practical(probably not), but watching all that water
| flow into the ocean this winter seemed like such a waste.
|
| The WRCB's plan is to store 600,000 acre feet of water which is
| 26,136,000,000 cubic feet. If we took 500 miles of viaduct
| (2,640,000 feet) at an average depth of 30 feet and average width
| of 40 feet ( = 3,168,000,000 cubic feet) and dug it 10x deeper,
| we'd be styling.
|
| I mean, a 300 foot trench along the middle of California is
| doable, right?
| clord wrote:
| Trees and grazing animals collaboratively replenish aquifers.
| Meadows, being porous, guide moisture downwards, preventing
| floods and evaporation. Animal droppings enhance soil
| bioactivity, boosting water capture. Moreover, this process, free
| of fossil fertilizers, sequesters carbon. Areas abandoning cattle
| operations or imposing 're-wilding' often face desertification
| and flooding. Similarly, grain plantations that exclude animals
| share this issue. I've personally seen a parched, over-fertilized
| grain field transform into a vibrant savannah with natural
| springs within five years due to herd migration. The soil is now
| a joy to walk on, spongey and soft. Next farm over they still
| plant grains, and it's hard-pan and salted.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Requiring 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.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| 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_.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Would organic farming help here? Seems like there are studies
| [1] showing nitrate leaching is less with it. Probably
| reducing cattle/chicken counts too, as those shit pits are a
| big source of it.
|
| 1 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01
| 678...
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Oh most definitely it would, but you run into trade offs
| with production / productivity. That's at least what most
| of my local farmer friends argue. We proactively add some
| good bacteria to our ponds monthly to reduce waste by
| products and things as well, so it's possible that they
| could fix some of the biome issues.
| markdown wrote:
| The problem is that organic farming can only feed 2 and a
| half families. It's not a feasible way to live unless you
| already have the privilege of wealth or alternate sources
| of income.
| docandrew wrote:
| Unfortunately it's illegal to dig ponds on your property
| without a permit and the appropriate water rights in some
| areas. There's a whole field of law around water rights and
| these sorts of permits, it's really wild. You need an
| engineering plan with the expected evaporation rate and then
| need to describe how you'd replace the water you took from some
| downstream, more senior rights holder.
| bequanna wrote:
| Which states? I think this is heavily dependent on the size
| of pond, size of waterway you're impeding and the
| jurisdiction.
| meristohm wrote:
| Permeable 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| My concern for urban permeable pavement is all of the chemicals
| that would be absorbed with it. Same with the forced injection
| of water back into an aquifer. I was under the impression that
| the water being pulled through the ground is a filtering
| process so that the water in the aquifer is clean.
| myshpa wrote:
| > the water ... filtering process ... the water in the
| aquifer is clean
|
| Clean(er) ... maybe ... nowadays nitrates,
| pesticides/herbicides, pfas/pfoas, industrial chemicals
| (solvents, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds),
| pharmaceuticals (prescription drugs, over-the-counter
| medications), lead, arsenic, mercury, and cadmium (through
| industrial activities, mining operations, and improper waste
| disposal), chlorinated solvents, such as trichloroethylene
| (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE), all were detected in the
| groundwater.
|
| Nothing is "clean" anymore. Not the arctic, not the tops of
| the mountains in the natural reserves, not the remote
| islands, not the deep underground.
| gaoshan wrote:
| In the case of a place like Florida, parts of the gigantic
| aquifer that extends under that State and up in Georgia get
| backfilled by brackish water once depleted below a certain level
| and this effectively destroys it, preventing refilling or
| refreshing because of the salt content that gets introduced.
| walleeee wrote:
| yes, this is commonly called saltwater intrusion and is a
| serious problem
|
| https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/s...
| sb8244 wrote:
| I 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
| pgrote wrote:
| Aquifers are intriguing. They are so large a person has a hard
| time realizing over a period of time how the land is affected
| when they are tapped. Subsidence is hard to wrap your head
| around.
|
| San Joaquin Valley is a good example.
|
| https://www.mantecabulletin.com/news/local-news/san-joaquin-...
|
| https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/location-maximum-land-subs...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| The water users sucked up $500M worth of water infrastructure -
| that 250k people are likely to pay for - $2000 per person.
|
| As long as greedy people have this option, they're going to
| take it.
|
| The solution is not hoping people start thinking sustainably.
| It's doing something to prevent people from putting expensive
| externalities onto others.
| indus wrote:
| There is a California-specific law called the Subdivision Map Act
| that requires cities/counties to have provisions for parks when
| approving new subdivisions and housing.
|
| The specifics of this is super convoluted and left to the
| interpretation of the city and its planning done at the county.
|
| What would be amazing is to add a certain percentage to lakes and
| ponds when new parks are created--and not just green field.
|
| Hope someone can lead and get this amended.
| lief79 wrote:
| Surface water in the desert ... that could easily backfire.
|
| I think a related idea that might be more appropriate is
| requiring drainage areas that slow water flow and increase
| absorption.
| aurizon wrote:
| I have often felt the ogallala aquifer could be recharged by
| diverting some of the great lakes spring runoff into the Atlantic
| via canals as well as via one of the many gravel buried moraines
| that connect with and now recharge the ogallala. Not sure how
| this would affect the Atlantic, but 5-10% of it would go a long
| way to help the lowering of the Ogallala over the pat 100 years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| I wonder if this could help Venice with its subsidence problem.
| ChiCityRanger wrote:
| The article needlessly mentions the Murzuk-Djado Basin and the
| Arabian Basin as having "little hope of recharging", when the
| very study it cites shows that the Murzuk-Djado basin as being
| less stressed than the California basin it talks about. I hate
| how American Exceptionalism always creeps its way into everything
| regardless how benign the topic seems. It's like she's trying to
| say "hey, we've got it bad but at least we're not as backwards as
| those mOsLeM countries".
|
| here's the study for those interested:
| https://news.uci.edu/2015/06/16/a-third-of-the-worlds-bigges...
| Permit wrote:
| > It's like she's trying to say "hey, we've got it bad but at
| least we're not as backwards as those mOsLeM countries".
|
| Nope, it's not like that at all.
| ChiCityRanger wrote:
| I could be wrong. It's likely that my characterization was
| not her intent. That said, even the most well meaning
| individual in the "west" has this implicit bias against the
| "non west" that it just gets everywhere and you see it
| everywhere.
| whiskeytuesday wrote:
| _You_ see it everywhere, I see it occasionally.
| justrealist wrote:
| I think it's more the practical matter that California even
| when dry receives 5x the rain of Saudi Arabia.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| As a general matter, I hear you. But in this case I think your
| objections are misplaced: it actually agrees with you that the
| California basis is _more stressed_ , but also is the subject
| of an ambitious plan to recharge it (which may or may not
| succeed) which is the topic of the article.
|
| It also blames the stress on the Murzuk-Djado and Arabian
| Basins on climate change which, to me, places the blame more on
| the U.S. than on 'backwards muslims.'
|
| Here's the full passage:
|
| > _Especially in places that have already been hard-hit by
| climate change_ , many aquifers have become so depleted that
| humans need to step in; the Arabian Aquifer in Saudi Arabia and
| the Murzuk-Djado Basin in North Africa, per a 2015 study, are
| particularly stressed and have little hope of recharging. In
| the U.S., aquifers are depleting fast from the Pacific
| Northwest to the Gulf, _but drought-stricken California is the
| poster-child of both water stress and efforts to undo the
| damage_.
|
| In any case, it's actually pretty fascinating how a few
| sentences about aquifers can draw out these issues. And, to
| your point, I would certainly not be shocked to learn that
| there are ambitious plans to recharge the Murzuk-Djado and
| Arabian Basins that this article overlooks.
| onecommentman wrote:
| Albuquerque 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."
|
| https://www.abcwua.org/education-23b_Recharge/
| jubjubbird wrote:
| Speaking of Albuquerque, this just-published paper shows how
| measuring the change in acceleration due to gravity can be used
| to map aquifer storage change. Importation of San Juan River
| water has made a big difference.
|
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2023.101413
| fghorow wrote:
| Microgravity surveying is great for this and other geo
| applications. I know of many geothermal fields mapped the
| same way to monitor fluid level and steam migration. Good
| stuff!
| w10-1 wrote:
| The numbers and interest could change significantly if
| desalinization membranes could target multi-stage high-volume
| applications. Or using overland solar tunnels: roofed with solar
| arrays, the bottom of which would be cooled to condense the
| evaporation from the water.
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(page generated 2023-05-16 23:01 UTC)