Renewable "primary water" the solution to drought?

JEEP

The Living Force
FOTCM Member

A New Water Source That Could Make Drought a Thing of the Past

I came across this article that talks about a new water source - "primary water" or "deep seated water". The beginning part questions where earth's water even came from:
The most widely held theory is that water arrived on the planet from comets or asteroids, since any water on Earth when it was first formed would have evaporated in the intense heat of its early atmosphere. One problem with that theory is that comet water is different from Earth water. It has a higher ratio of deuterium (“heavy water” with an extra neutron in it). Asteroids, too, are not a good fit for Earth’s water.
I would have been shocked if the idea that earth's water is really water that was "ripped off" from Mars was mentioned at all. This is what's theorized:
A more likely theory gaining new attention is that Earth’s water comes largely from within. Minerals containing hydrogen and oxygen outgas water vapor (H2O) under intense pressure and heat from the lower mantle (the layer between Earth’s thin crust and its hot core). Water emerges as steam and seeps outward under the centrifugal force of the spinning earth toward the crust, where it cools and seeps up through the fractured rock formations of the crust and the upper mantle.

Studies over the past two decades have found evidence of several oceans’ worth of water locked up in rock as far down as 1,000 kilometers, challenging the assumption that water arrived from space after Earth’s formation. A study reported in January 2017 based on isotopes from meteorites and the mantle found that water is unlikely to have arrived on icy comets after Earth formed.

Another study, reported in New Scientist the same month, showed that Earth’s huge store of water may have originated via chemical reactions in the mantle rather than coming from space. The researchers ran a computer simulation of reactions between liquid hydrogen and quartz in Earth’s upper mantle. The simulation showed that water forms within quartz but then cannot escape, so the pressure builds up – to such high levels that it could induce deep earthquakes. Rather than hydrogen bonding into the quartz crystal structure, as the researchers expected, it was found to disrupt the structure by bonding with oxygen. When the rock melts under intense heat, the water is released, forming water-rich regions below Earth’s surface. The researchers said that water formed in the mantle could reach the surface in various ways — for example via magma in the form of volcanic activity — and that water could still be being created deep inside the Earth today. If so, that means water is a renewable resource.
The article continues with how to access this water:
The challenge is drawing this deep water to the surface, but there are many verified cases of mountaintop wells that have gushed water for decades in arid lands. This water, which could not have come from the rainwater of the conventional hydrologic cycle, is variously called “deep-seated,” “juvenile” or “primary” water. It is now being located and tapped by enterprising hydrogeologists using technological innovations like those used in other extractive industries – but without their destructive impact on the environment.

According to Mark Burr, CEO of Primary Water Technologies, these innovations include mapping techniques using GIS layering and 3-D modeling, satellite imagery and other sophisticated geophysical data collection; radiometrics, passive seismics, advanced resistivity and even quantum physics. A video capturing one of his successful drills at Chekshani Cliffs, Utah, and the innovative techniques used to pinpoint where to drill, can be seen here.

Burr comments that locating “primary water” does not require drilling down thousands of feet. He says that globally, thousands of primary water wells have been successfully drilled; and for most of them, flowing water was tapped at less than 400 feet. It is forced up from below through fissures in the Earth. What is new are the innovative technologies now being used to pinpoint where those fissures are.

The developments, he says, mirror those in the U.S. oil and gas industry, which went from cries of “Peak Oil” deficiency to an oil and gas glut in less than a decade. Dominated for 40 years by a foreign OPEC cartel, the oil industry was disrupted through a combination of scientific advancements (including recognition of abiotic oil and gas formations), technological innovation, and regulatory modernization. The same transformation is under way in water exploration and production.
Background on this continues in the article:
These developments were pioneered in the U.S. by Burr’s mentors, led by Bavarian-born mining engineer and geologist Stephen Riess of San Diego. Riess drilled over 800 wells around the world before his death in 1985 and was featured in several books, including “New Water for a Thirsty World” (1960) by Dr. Michael Salzman, professor of economics at the University of Southern California.

Partnering with Riess until his death was Hungarian-born hydrogeologist Pal Pauer, founder of the Primary Water Institute based in Ojai, California. Pauer has also successfully located and drilled over 1,000 primary water wells worldwide, including over 500 in East Africa. One noteworthy well was drilled high on the top of a mountain in Kenya at Ngu-Nyumu, captured in a short video here. The workers drilled through rock and hit water at 300 feet, pumping at 15-30 gallons per minute. The flow, which is now being captured in a water tank, is still serving hundreds of villagers who were previously hauling water from heavily infested streams in jugs balanced on their heads.

Another remarkable mountaintop project overseen by Pauer involved two wells drilled at a 6,000 foot elevation in the Tehachapi Mountains in California. The drill first hit water at 35 feet. The 7-inch diameter borehole proceeded to eject water at a rate estimated to be over 800 gallons per minute. The event is captured on YouTube here.

Like California, Australia is an arid land with chronic water problems. An Australian company called Sustainable Water Solutions (SWS), a partner of Burr’s Primary Water Technologies, was featured on a local TV news program here. A video of one of SWS’s successful case studies detailing its methodologies is here.

A rival company is Australian-based AquaterreX Deep Seated Water Technology. According to its website, AquaterreX is an international enterprise employing geology, environmental and earth sciences with a range of proprietary methodologies to identify and analyze geologic, hydrologic, atmospheric, and other data to locate reliable sources of Deep Seated Water with nearly 100% accuracy. Some of the company’s results are shown in a video which describes “deep-seated water” as being stored in a deeper layer of aquifers below those of the conventional hydrologic cycle.
What distinguishes "primary water" from groundwater:
What these researchers call “primary water” or “deep seated water” is classified by the National Ground Water Association (NGWA) simply as a form of “groundwater,” since it is in the ground. But whatever it is called, these newly tapped flows have not been part of the hydrologic cycle for at least the last century. This is shown on testing by the lack of the environmental contaminants found in the hydrologic water cycle. From the time when atomic testing began in the Pacific, hydrologic water has contained traces of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen used as a fuel in thermonuclear bombs. Primary water shoots up tritium-free —clean, fresh and usually drinkable without filtration.

The latest NGWA fact sheet explicitly confirms that water is a renewable resource. It states:
  • About 90 percent of our freshwater supplies lie underground, but less than 27 percent of the water Americans use comes from underground sources, which illustrates the under-utilization of groundwater.
  • Groundwater is a significant water supply source — the amount of groundwater storage dwarfs our present surface water supply.
  • Hydrologists estimate, according to the National Geographic Society, U.S. groundwater reserves to be at least 33,000 trillion gallons — equal to the amount discharged into the Gulf of Mexico by the Mississippi River in the past 200 years.
  • At any given moment, groundwater is 20 to 30 times greater than the amount in all the lakes, streams, and rivers of the United States….
  • Groundwater is a renewable resource. [Emphasis added.]
The article wraps up with these thoughts:
Tapping into local deep water sources not only can help ease pressures on debt-strapped public treasuries but can bypass the Water Barons and relieve territorial tensions over water rights. Water sovereignty is a critical prerequisite to food sovereignty and to national and regional independence. As noted in a recent Water Today article, quoting James D’Arezzo:
“The fact is, we do not have to severely restrict water usage, if we leverage all the tools at our disposal. There is plenty of water available on the planet and we now know how to find it. We also have newer best practices that can make a dramatic difference in total usage…. If we start acting now, in a short time the headlines about ‘water restrictions’ and grotesque pictures of dead animals and starving children can be replaced with headlines about more food production, smarter use of water and less conflict.”
Sounds promising - but what are the odds we'll see any pronouncements of renewable - even abundant - stores of more or less pristine water.
 
This might be a little of topic but one thing I always thought was interesting. The US Army use to always give us iodine tablets, so if we ran out of water we could just use "foul" water and drop the tablets in there. Just came to mind from what we have learned about iodine here over the years.
 
I actually just noticed as I was closing the article tab, that it was written by Ellen Brown. She's also written this article:

Nature’s Own Fuel Could Save Us From the Greenhouse Effect and Electric Grid Failure

Hemp fuel and other biofuels could reduce carbon emissions while saving the electric grid, but they’re often overlooked for more expensive, high-tech climate solutions.

Well, that's a whole nother ball of wax, but quite topical as China powers down in the name of Climate Change™ - one can sense still another infusion of chaos into our already overstressed world:

China's short-term solution to curbing energy use: cut the lights

Chinese cities are enacting controlled power outages across the country. Media reports blame coal prices, but economists say the goal is to keep energy use below official targets, especially as China prepares to host the U.N. environmental conference.
[...]
“This is in line with China’s decarbonization ambitions,” she said.
 
Back
Top Bottom