Artesian Water

 1914 Label for Olympia Beer 

The beer was brewed until the 1980s in Tumwater, Washington (adjacent to Olympia) using artesian water, or so the brewery claimed. Today that beer brand is brewed in Southern California.

From the time I was a small child I remember people talking about artesian water, and until I was almost an adult I believed that it was somehow different from standard surface water or the water coming out of the tap. Advertising, including that for a popular brand of beer in the Puget Sound region, suggested that somehow artesian water tasted better or was more healthful. Based on marketing for Fiji water, a widely distributed brand of bottled water, that misconception persists.  In fact artesian is a description of the source and not of the water itself. Artesian water can be almost pure or nearly saturated with chemicals. Its primary trait is that it came from an underground aquifer where water is under pressure. When the aquifer comes to the surface a flowing or artesian well occurs. Many springs are of this sort.

A diagram of an artesian system where ground water is under pressure and rises to the surface when there is an opening. Source: http://www.littledippers.com/geocaching/ArtesianWell.jpg

Artesian wells are often a selling point for a property, especially a large property to be used for grazing where permanent surface water is distant or rare. In arid areas artesian seeps and wells are often the only source of water for many kilometers and thus are especially prized. In a later posting I plan to write a little about Australia's Great Artesian basin. The intense aridity of the outback would preclude almost all human use in many areas were it not for the water the artesian flow provides.

Artesian wells are but one aspect of ground water, a topic about which I shall have a great deal to say.

Drought II Cycles and Climate Change

 Kenya’s Ewaso Nyiro River Dries

The river, important for wildlife on the plains of Kenya, has ceased to flow in this October 2009 aerial photograph.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

Drought in the preceding post was called an absence of adequate wet season water to meet dry season demand, and severe drought follows several years of inadequate precipitation. Seasonal drought is common in many climates. Equally common are climate cycles with a series of wet years followed by a series of dry years. Early humans were acutely aware of these cycles, witness the biblical seven fat years and seven lean years. Not a little effort was expended on trying to foresee conditions in the coming season. There is some evidence that Inca seers used stargazing conditions to predict crop conditions for the coming season. If the sky was clear enough to see certain stars, then the season was likely to be a good one, while years when those stars could not be seen meant bad crops. While the record is difficult to interpret, especially as the Inca had no recorded language as far as we know, it is quite possible these observations were based on El Niño conditions off the nearby coast.

While they are considerably more difficult to prepare for than annual variations in precipitation, longer term climatic cycles have also led to human efforts to minimize drought effects. In Kenya water from more humid higher elevations can take the place of local precipitation in drought periods. If there is advance warning of drought conditions, then the crops planted can be adjusted and the number of stock grazed on land can be reduced. Large storage dams are another response, storing water in a wet period to use in a dry one. All of the responses are premised on the expectation that the dry period will be limited to only a few years. When the dry spell is extended over many years, responses become much more difficult.

Climatic cycles occur over various time periods from a single year to five years or so in the case of the El Niño to a decade even to centuries and perhaps even millenia. The essence of a cycle is the expectation that at some point conditions will return to "normal," that is to levels of precipitation suitable for agriculture and human settlement. Generally humans can only adjust to cycles of a decade or less with temporary measures. Longer term cycles can lead to complete changes in activity or even abandonment of land and settlements.

Now there is evidence that some recently observed climatic shifts that are unlikely to be cyclic but rather are probably permanent. Overall this is often called "global warming," for the general movement is toward higher temperatures across the earth's surface. Related to those warmer temperatures are higher rates of evapo-transpiration and in many, but not all, arid and subhumid areas diminished precipitation. Some marginal areas where precipitation has been barely adequate for agriculture are likely to become unusable.

Drought I

2006 Drought, Union County, New Mexico

© EOP

Today the Los Angeles Times stated "California's drought may be over, but no one's rushing to lift restrictions."  Meanwhile, in a story posted on Huffington Post.com  the former BBC reporter and current Oxfam representative Caroline Gluck wrote "Millions face severe hunger in Niger." Both the southwestern quadrant of the United States and the Sahel region of Africa have been through prolonged dry spells, drought that put severe strains on water supplies. In Southern California that means a little less water for the garden and restrictions on using water to wash cars and sidewalks. In Niger it may well mean mass hunger or even famine. The el Niño conditions of the past autumn and winter brought rainfall to the southwestern region of the US, and for the first time in several years runoff and stream flow have allowed reservoirs to be filled and discussion of lifting restrictions on water use. No such relief is in sight for the Sahel, and while food is available in the markets of towns and cities, subsistence farmers face starvation because they lack the means to purchase food and their fields are unproductive.

Drought is one of the most difficult of natural conditions to predict and even to define. Most climates are characterized by annual dry spells. Mediterranean climates like that of California have dry summers with most of the precipitation falling in the cooler months of autumn and winter. Monsoonal climates, the climate of south Asia, are characterized by a dry cool season and heavy rain during the summer months. Adaptation to annual variation is not too difficult if there is adequate precipitation in the rainy season. In a drought wet season precipitation is inadequate to meet dry season demands. If that absence of precipitation should extend over a number of years, the drought is considered severe.

The most famous drought in the United States was that of the 1930s when "dust bowl" conditions prevailed over a large swath of land extending south from the Dakotas to Texas on the High Plains, the western margins of the Great Plains. The Seattle writer Tim Egan tells the story of the drought in the region where Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas adjoin (including Union County, NM pictured above) in his harrowing The Worst Hard Time. While dust storms and similar conditions have not returned, that same region has been under severe water stress over the past 5 years, a drought that has cut agricultural production and led to some economic dislocations. Only widespread use of ground water from the Oglalla aquifer has allowed field crops to thrive in the region.

In future postings we shall examine both drought and groundwater resources in more detail.

Some Publications on Water Issues

Tibetan Plateau, Himalayas at  lower edge of the photo, 2008

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

Over the past week I have encountered two newspaper pieces, a book and three online journals worth noting:

1. China, Tibet, and Asia's Rivers. An op-ed piece in the right-wing Washington Post last Monday gives a fascinating spin on Tibet as the water tower of Asia (in a manner even more dramatic than the Massif Central, is called the water tower of France). Most of southern Asia's major rivers have their origins in Chinese controlled Tibet, and China could claim much of that water for its own use. Should large scale diversions of Tibetian water for use in arid Northern China take place, then downstream users in nations including nuclear armed India and Pakistan could suffer great harm. The op ed piece was written by a researcher at the Indian Institute for Defense Studies and gives a hint of India's take on the issue.

2. Colorado River and Boulder Dam: A book review by the historian of California Kevin Starr in today's Washington Post Book World praises a new book on the construction of Boulder (Hoover) Dam and the evolution of water policy in the lower Colorado River basin. Starr's review is worth a read, and I am looking forward to reading the book itself in the near future. The book is Hiltzik, Michael. 2010. Colossus: On the Building of the Hoover Dam. Free Press ISBN 978146532163.

3.Water as a subject has led to a huge number of publications, including many journals. In addition articles on water topics are widespread in journals in fields as disparate as medicine, geography, environmental economics, civil engineering, and architecture. No single individual could possible hope to keep up with all of the literature. The task is especially difficult for interested laypersons. Much of the journal literature is couched in what seems to be impenetrable jargon, and if the field is engineering or economics the articles tend to be salted with complicated equations. That said, a few journals are written in an accessible way, and recently I have discovered two worth mentioning:

Water Alternatives  describes itself as an interdisciplinary journal on water, politics and development and its current issue examines the topic of large dams, like Boulder Dam, a major topic as several immense dams have recently been completed or are on the drawing boards including the Three Gorges Dam in China, which will be the world's largest when completed.

Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education published by the Universities Council on Water Resources covers water topics from many perspectives and is readable by any intelligent adult. It may be necessary to have a subscription for the most recent issues, but older issues are available gratis online. As it happens, the lead article in the most recent issue is about drought and water supply on the Colorado River!

Also online is the journal Water, somewhat more technical but worthwhile for those with a serious interest and some scientific background.

Minerals, Mining, and Water I

Berkeley Pit, an open pit copper mine, Butte, Montana

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

A report in today's New York Times says there may be huge deposits of valuable minerals in Afghanistan (remind me  of why that war was started), and the country could enjoy substantial wealth from their exploitation. Several skeptics have questioned the news, but assuming it is true, exploitation, if it happens in the not too distant future, is neither going to be easy nor cheap. The war has demonstrated the problems of a country with minimal transportation infrastructure, where electricity is sporadic even in larger places, and where political control is far from firmly established. Another problem could be the absence of adequate water supplies.


Most types of mining use vast quantities of water and often contaminate that water. Hydraulic processes use water  to dislodge ore. In the California and later the Yukon gold rushes in North America huge areas were damaged by hydraulic processes, and more than a century and a half later some of the water flowing over the abandoned workings contains quantities of mercury dangerous for humans. More recently hydraulic mining was used in Malaysia to dislodge tin ores where dredging of river bottoms has also been utilized.


While hydraulic techniques are limited to ores at or near the earth's surface, underground and deep pit mining also demand large quantities of water to wash and treat ores, and sometimes to carry crushed ore from a mine considerable distances to  processing facilities. Deep pit mines, like the Berkeley pit in Butte, Montana shown above, are potentially hazardous for nearby streams and rivers. The pits can fill with water, and the water can become highly toxic. Water flooding the abandoned Montana pit is so toxic that birds landing on its surface have reportedly died! Sitting close  the Continental Divide, water released and ground water seeping out from the mine could contaminate either the Missouri River drainage or the Columbia drainage and make use of river water problematic far downstream.

Even when the processes do not use much water, mining can harm water supplies as mining wastes pollute lakes, streams and aquifers. Breaking into ore bodies can unleash previously trapped underground aquifers contaminated with arsenic and other toxic elements and chemicals. Ores in contact with surface water also unleash contaminants, and very toxic materials are used in some mining processes, including cyanide and arsenic.

Lakes

Lake Sarez, Tajikistan Source: NASA Earth Observatory

While present attention is focused on ethnic and political unrest in Kyrgyzistan, its neighbor, another of the "stans" formed upon dissolution of the old USSR,  presents a problem of a very different kind. Held back by an earthen dam created in a 1911 earthquake, Lake Sarez with more than 15 cubic kilometers of water, threatens catastrophic flooding in downstream areas on the Murghob River, a tributary of the Amur (Oxus) flowing into the Aral Sea (lots more on that later). Erosion and other evidence leads to fears of a break in the earthen dam and subsequent rapid discharge of the water it contains. Slow draining of the lake, which is claimed to hold very pure water, has been proposed.

The Sarez example points  to a basic fact of surface water on earth, lakes usually exist because of episodic geological activity and often have short life spans, in geological terms at least. Earthquake formed lakes can be observed in various places, including Quake Lake in Montana formed behind a landslide caused by a1959 earthquake with its epicenter near Yellowstone National Park. The Great Lakes of the United States and Canada are remnants of the last continental glaciation as are thousands of smaller lakes scattered across the glaciated region from the shore of the Arctic Ocean southward to New York, Minnesota, and Montana. Elsewhere the movement of tectonic plates has created large lakes including Lake Baikal in Siberia and the lakes in Africa's Rift valley. Those lakes usually are longer lived than ones formed by earthquakes or by glacial activity, for a rift continues to widen for millions of years before finally creating a new ocean basin. Finally more than a few lakes are the consequence of animals, including beavers and humans, blocking the flow of streams.Beaver dams can create surprisingly large lakes, and of course damming of streams by humans has created immense reservoirs. 

All lakes are created by dams of one sort or another, conditions which temporarily hold back water from gravitational flow toward the sea.

Lakes die when the dam, natural or man made, breaks, the potential problem with Lake Sarez; when evaporation causes them to disappear; when silt fills their basins, or when organic matter chokes them in a process called eutrophication. Small lakes rarely last more than a few millennia, and some survive for only a century or two.

Oil, Gas and Water

 Oil on the Surface of the Gulf of Mexico, 7 June 2010, Source: NASA Earth Observatory

The catastrophic oil leakage into the Gulf of Mexico would seem to be rather remote from issues to be discussed in the autumn course on water (though it may have direct bearing on the spring course when food supplies are to be examined; more on that at a later date), but the dangers from oil and gas spillage into bodies of water are not limited to salt water. There is a long and sad history of freshwater bodies contaminated by oil and gas leakage, and that history may have some additional catastrophic chapters before the age of hydrocarbons comes to its inevitable end. The dumping of raw petroleum and various byproducts was sadly common in the early years of oil exploration and exploitation in the United States, first in western Pennsylvania and Ohio and later in petroleum boom areas of California, Texas, Oklahoma and elsewhere. More rigorous laws have forced the petroleum companies to use greater care, and large spills on land have been rare in North America over the past half century. Small spills, on the other hand, are quite common. Recently there have been a number of reports of spillage along the Alaska pipeline. Comparable cases could be found almost everywhere that petroleum and natural gas are found close to lakes and streams. Only a few of the spills are catastrophic, but even a small spill can upset the local ecology and render water unfit for human or domestic animal use.

The Delaware is one of America's iconic rivers, and it is also the most threatened by drilling for natural gas. It was recently named one of the most endangered rivers in the United States as gas wells have been sunk into the Marcellus Shale, a natural gas rich geological formation that stretches southward from central New York State into Pennsylvania. Last week a major accident occurred with a large quantity of material, including drilling muck, spread across some Pennsylvania forest land near the river. There has been relatively little public notice of the event, and it has not figured in news reports from the major media sources. The accident points to the substantial dangers inherent in drilling for gas and oil on land. As the American Rivers report indicates, the Delaware River, flowing to the Atlantic where there are important fishing grounds and passing through some of the most densely populated zones of the United States, could be the recipient of huge quantities of toxic material should a spill occur in its Pennsylvania or New York State watershed.

Bottled Water: I A Personal History: When it seemed a good idea

Antique Soda Siphons, Antiques Street Market, San Telmo, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2008 © EOP

This is my week to be self-indulgent, so I thought I would take a few minutes to write about a subject that has become quite central to the discussion of water, bottled water. Peter Gleick's new book Bottled and Sold has generated a lot of buzz, as have various print and television advertisements - some of them promoting bottled water and others suggesting that it not be used. There is an online newsletter treating bottled water in somewhat the same fashion as wine, Bottled Water of the World. It would appear to have links to companies bottling water for sale and the publisher is FineWaters. The newsletter promotes the distinctive tastes of various waters bottled in countries around the world. On the other side various environmental groups have websites telling us it is best to drink tap water, for bottled water is horrifically expensive and environmentally destructive. Alternet Water is a good source of postings on the environmental problems of bottled water.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest I was but vaguely aware of the existence of bottled water, encountering it only on vacation trips to Southern California. I was an adult travelling overseas when I first encountered widespread use of drinking water in bottles. The glass of tap water taken for granted in the US and Canada was not on offer in the restaurants of Continental Europe. One accompanied a meal with a purchased bottle, in my case usually con gas. When travelling in the poorer countries of Latin America and Asia bottled water was a necessity if one wanted to avoid cholera or similar water borne illness. In the mid-1970s  a cholera epidemic in Leningrad led to a US State Department recommendation to drink only bottled water, and I became accustomed to the rather foul taste of mineral water available in Soviet restaurants and hotels on a sojourn to attend a meeting in Moscow and Leningrad. Elsewhere bottled water generally tasted good, and drinking it seemed a small price to pay for avoiding disease.

For a number of years I thought little more of the issue and mostly drank tap water in the US and bottled water overseas, though I did become rather fond of carbonated water (I have never much liked soda pop) and bought it as a periodic treat, especially after prestige brands like Perrier became widely available. One summer we rented a farmhouse in the Cevennes not far from the Source Perrier, so we made a day trip, crossing the Canal du Rhône à Sèt adjacent to the Perrier bottling plant where we took a tour. The tour itself was a little strange, for it had a great deal to say about the manufacture of the bottles and the bottling process but said nothing whatsoever about Source Perrier, the fountain from which the special water is presumably drawn.

A few years later a brief period of residence in the Los Angeles area where the tap water is somewhat saline, or so it tasted to us, led us to join many Angelenos in mostly drinking bottled water and also using it for cooking. Then we moved back to the Pacific Northwest where tap water tasted good. Once again except on overseas trips we rarely drank bottled water with "fizzy water" as only an occasional treat. Abroad we were often thankful for bottled water in areas where the sanitary standards were questionable. An image remaining in my mind's eye is of porters carrying many bottles of water (and beer) on a trekking holiday in northern Thailand (that presents a bit of an ethical problem, but it was a long time ago).

The first awareness that bottled water was something more than an occasional luxury and a necessity in areas where tap water is unsafe or has an unpleasant taste came watching the film The Player where a comic theme is the lead character's obsession with bottled water. Shortly thereafter I became aware of people running and speed walking with bottles of water in hand and, using a word that irritates me like fingernails on a blackboard talking about "hydrating" themselves. Restaurants began to offer bottled waters, and all seemed well with the world. On a trip to Washington, DC before returning to live here again, we even noticed that some water fountains in the city had been turned off because tap water was declared unsafe, the problem was lead contamination ongoing to the present. Given that water in Fairfax County where we were condemned to live  tastes foul, I foresaw years of drinking bottled water. And bottled water was everywhere with whole sections of Costco and entire aisles of fancier grocery stores devoted to its sale.

What I failed to recognize was the long list of problems accompanying widespread consumption of bottled water. Fairfax water continues to be foul tasting, but we have deigned to drink it and use it in cooking. Why we have in a subsequent posting.

Columbia Basin Project I

Grand Coulée Dam, 2005, © EOP

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is perhaps the most famous water project in the United States, but during the Depression years and the New Deal of the 1930s, several huge water projects were initiated or expanded under the control of the Bureau of Reclamation. As today is my birthday, I thought I might indulge myself and write a little about the one I know the best and with which my family has had close connections, the Columbia Basin Project an irrigation and hydroelectric scheme using the huge flow of the Columbia River, an exotic river flowing across the northern and central parts of Washington State. Its centerpiece is Grand Coulée Dam (shown above and again at the end of this posting) for many years the largest hydroelectric facility on earth and still the largest in the United States.

In the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains, the Great Columbia Plain (pace Donald Meinig) was a vast steppe or high desert atop one of the more geologically interesting bits of the United States, the Columbia basalt flow. In the early years of settlement, after the Northern Pacific Crossed that steppe at a diagonal with its route from Spokane to Pasco, there was some settlement and dryland agriculture, wheat farming and ranching, but the area was lightly populated. Only water was necessary for an agricultural bonanza, it was claimed. The Columbia Basin Project, long a goal of Chambers of Commerce and other civic booster groups in the central and eastern part of Washington State, was intended to provide that water in a scheme similar, though not identical, to the TVA, with the dual goals of long term regional development and stimulus spending in a depression.

A make-work project to employ some of the large number of unemployed, Grand Coulée Dam was begun in 1933 and completed 9 years later, one of the largest engineering projects ever undertaken up to that time, though in publicity it was somewhat overshadowed by construction of Boulder Dam in a dramatic canyon of the Colorado River ongoing at the same time. When it was being built there was no clear idea of how or where the vast amount of electricity Grand Coulée Dam could produce would be consumed, though sale of electricity was to help fund the project and pay for the more than 1000 km of irrigation canals and drainage ditches the project would require if carried to completion. World War II defense industries, including Boeing's Seattle plants, rendered the issue of where to sell the electricity moot until 1945, after which a series of aluminum smelters purchased much of the electricity produced.

Meanwhile the irrigation scheme was constructed, albeit at a slower pace. Several of the major canals and drainage works were not completed until the 1960s and 1970s. Irrigation has transformed the sere steppe into an immense green expanse, at least in Spring and early summer. Areas where the distance between trees was measured in kilometers in the 1930s or even as late as the 1960s, have become orchards and vinyards. Dryland wheat or barley has been replaced by water intensive field crops including corn (maize). Sounds wonderful, the bonanza promised by early boosters, but the change has come at some environmental costs to be examined in a later posting.

Grand Coulée Dam, 2005, © EOP