{"id":196700,"date":"2021-10-04T12:03:36","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T11:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=196700"},"modified":"2021-10-03T05:32:14","modified_gmt":"2021-10-03T04:32:14","slug":"a-new-water-source-that-could-make-drought-a-thing-of-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/10\/a-new-water-source-that-could-make-drought-a-thing-of-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Water Source That Could Make Drought a Thing of the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oceans of water are beneath our feet, and new technologies are extracting it economically without ecological damage.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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1 Oct 2021 – <\/em>Lack of fresh water is now a global crisis. Water shortages mean food shortages, with hunger creating\u00a0death tolls<\/a>\u00a0substantially exceeding those of the current Covid-19 crisis. According to the United Nations, some 800 million people are without clean water, and 40% of the world\u2019s population is impacted by drought.\u00a0By one measure<\/a>, almost 100 percent of the Western United States is currently in drought, setting an all-time 122-year record. Meanwhile, local \u201cwater wars\u201d rage, with states, cities and whole countries battling each other for scarce water resources.<\/p>\n

The ideal solution would be new water flows to add to the hydrologic cycle, and promising new scientific discoveries and technologies are holding out that possibility.<\/p>\n

But mainstream geologists have long contended that water is a fixed, non-renewable resource; and vested interests are happy to profit from that limiting proposition. Declaring water \u201cthe new oil<\/a>,\u201d an investor class of \u201cWater Barons\u201d \u2014including wealthy billionaire tycoons, megabanks, mega-funds and investment powerhouses \u2014 has cornered the market by buying up water rights and water infrastructure everywhere. As Jo-Shing Yang, author of\u00a0\u201cSolving Global Water Crises<\/a>,\u201d wrote in a 2012 article titled \u201cThe New \u2018Water Barons\u2019: Wall Street Mega-Banks are Buying up the World\u2019s Water<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

Facing offers of millions of dollars in cash from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, and other elite banks for their utilities and other infrastructure and municipal services, cities and states will find it extremely difficult to refuse these privatization offers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For developing countries, the World Bank has in some cases made water privatization\u00a0a condition of getting a loan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Competing Theories<\/strong><\/p>\n

Geologists say that all of the water on Earth, including the atmosphere, oceans, surface water and groundwater, participates in the natural system called the \u201chydrologic cycle<\/a>,\u201d a closed circuit in which water moves from the surface to the atmosphere and back again. Rainwater falls, becoming groundwater which collects in aquifers (underground layers of porous rock or sand), emerging as rivers and lakes, and evaporating into clouds to again become rain. New water called \u201cjuvenile water\u201d may be added through volcanic activities, but this addition is considered to be negligible.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0most widely held theory<\/a>\u00a0is 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\u00a0comet water is different<\/a>\u00a0from Earth water. It has a higher ratio of deuterium (\u201cheavy water\u201d with an extra neutron in it). Asteroids, too,\u00a0are not a good fit<\/a>\u00a0for Earth\u2019s water.<\/p>\n

A more likely theory gaining new attention is that Earth\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Studies over the past two decades have found evidence of\u00a0several oceans\u2019 worth of water locked up in rock<\/a>\u00a0as far\u00a0down as 1,000 kilometers<\/a>, challenging the assumption that water arrived from space after\u00a0 Earth\u2019s formation. A\u00a0study reported in January 2017<\/a>\u00a0based on isotopes from meteorites and the mantle found that water is unlikely to have arrived on icy comets after Earth formed.<\/p>\n

Another study,\u00a0reported in\u00a0New Scientist<\/em><\/a>\u00a0the same month, showed that Earth\u2019s 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\u2019s upper mantle. The simulation showed that water forms within quartz but then cannot escape, so the pressure builds up \u2013 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\u2019s surface. The researchers said that water formed in the mantle could reach the surface in various ways \u2014 for example via magma in the form of volcanic activity \u2014 and that water could still be being created deep inside the Earth today. If so, that means water is a renewable resource.<\/p>\n

New Technological Solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n

The challenge is drawing this deep water to the surface, but there are\u00a0many verified cases<\/a>\u00a0of 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 \u201cdeep-seated,\u201d \u201cjuvenile\u201d or \u201cprimary\u201d water. It is now being located and tapped by enterprising hydrogeologists using technological innovations like those used in other extractive industries \u2013 but without their destructive impact on the environment.<\/p>\n

According to Mark Burr, CEO of\u00a0Primary Water Technologies<\/a>,\u00a0 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\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Burr comments that locating \u201cprimary water\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The developments, he says, mirror those in the U.S. oil and gas industry, which went from cries of \u201cPeak Oil\u201d 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\u00a0recognition of abiotic oil and gas formations<\/a>), technological innovation, and regulatory modernization. The same transformation is under way in water exploration and production.<\/p>\n

Water Pioneers<\/strong><\/p>\n

These developments were pioneered in the U.S. by Burr\u2019s mentors, led by Bavarian-born mining engineer and geologist\u00a0Stephen Riess<\/a>\u00a0of San Diego. Riess drilled over 800 wells around the world before his death in 1985 and was featured in several books, including \u201cNew Water for a Thirsty World<\/a>\u201d (1960) by Dr. Michael Salzman, professor of economics at the University of Southern California.<\/p>\n

Partnering with Riess until his death was Hungarian-born hydrogeologist\u00a0Pal Pauer<\/a>, founder of the\u00a0Primary Water Institute<\/a>\u00a0based 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\u00a0here<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0on YouTube here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like California, Australia is an arid land with chronic water problems. An Australian company called\u00a0Sustainable Water Solutions<\/a>\u00a0(SWS), a partner of Burr\u2019s Primary Water Technologies, was featured on a local TV news program\u00a0here<\/a>. A video of one of SWS\u2019s successful case studies detailing its methodologies is\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A rival company is Australian-based AquaterreX Deep Seated Water Technology. According to\u00a0its website<\/a>, AquaterreX is an international enterprise employing\u00a0 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\u2019s results are shown in a\u00a0video<\/a>\u00a0which describes \u201cdeep-seated water\u201d as being stored in a deeper layer of aquifers below those of the conventional hydrologic cycle.<\/p>\n

Fresh Water Is Ubiquitous and Renewable<\/strong><\/p>\n

What these researchers call \u201cprimary water\u201d or \u201cdeep seated water\u201d is classified by the National Ground Water Association (NGWA) simply as a form of \u201cgroundwater,\u201d 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,\u00a0a radioactive isotope<\/a>\u00a0of hydrogen used as a fuel in thermonuclear bombs. Primary water shoots up\u00a0tritium-free<\/a>\u00a0\u2014clean, fresh and usually drinkable without filtration.<\/p>\n

The latest NGWA fact sheet<\/a>\u00a0explicitly confirms that\u00a0water is a renewable resource<\/em>. It states:<\/p>\n