Do governments re-fill underground aquifers?

[Boyo Jim]

I this story about the drought, and the last sentences caught my eye:

...Aquifers like the Oglala took thousands of years to fill and even heavy rains won't refill them after years of pumping water out, Kelley said. But aquifers can be replenished by diverting river water into them when supplies on the surface are plentiful.

It makes sense that this is possible, but is it actually done by anybody as a matter of deliberate policy? I've never heard of it, and I wonder if this is more of a theoretical than actual.

[EmAnJ]

I'm in Alberta. I've never heard of this.

ETA: And why is this in the Pit?

[voltaire]

Because fucking aquifers are in fucking pits?

[flatlined]

I just learned that some people in Vancouver Canada are on water rationing. They can only water their yards every other day. Maybe the Canadian government is doing that because they want to sell the water to people who need to refill the aquifers?

And, yeah, this shouldn't be in the Pit.

[TriPolar]

It looks like it's being considered.

ETA: It just doesn't feel right to give a serious, non-obscene answer in the pit.

[Boyo Jim]

Oops. meant it to be in GQ, not the Pit. I will report it, and perhaps Pit myself over this.

[Lemur866]

Originally Posted by flatlined

I just learned that some people in Vancouver Canada are on water rationing. They can only water their yards every other day.

The horror...the horror.

[Chimera]

Never heard of such a thing.

OTOH, a recent story about the drought causing some people's wells to dry up talked about some businesses that would come out and flush water back down into your well so you could draw it back up over the next week. One guy was selling 2100 gallons per week to some people for this purpose. Made me wonder why the hell they didn't just rent out or buy big water storage tanks.

[Smeghead]

They should refill them with lemonade, just to give the farmers a zesty surprise.

[black rabbit]

Originally Posted by Smeghead

They should refill them with lemonade, just to give the farmers a zesty surprise.

Or Brawndo. It's what plants crave!

[Gagundathar]

This handy guide should help:
Brawndo

[Eonwe]

I'm gonna go down to the aquifer and pour shit down there.

[flatlined]

I am going to hunt you down and hurt you. ALOT! After your ears and eys start bleeding because of my grammer and bad typing, I'm going to feed pop rocks to your cats.

Suffer and die a painful death!!!

[Colibri]

Originally Posted by Boyo Jim

Oops. meant it to be in GQ, not the Pit. I will report it, and perhaps Pit myself over this.

Happy to move it, considering how few threads get moved to GQ from the Pit.

[squeegee]

Yes, some governments do refill aquifers. Where I live, this is done though percolation ponds, though any large water holding storage will refill the aquifer below it.

[Boyo Jim]

Originally Posted by Colibri

Happy to move it, considering how few threads get moved to GQ from the Pit.

I am hopeful this will not turn into a train wreck of posters trash talking our water supply requiring the thread to be moved back into the Pit.

[aceplace57]

I don't have time to hunt up a cite. I have read that water in aquifers is very pure from filtering through the various sediment layers.

Pumping river water into a aquifer could have unexpected consequences. It would need some study before trying it.

[Francis Vaughan]

Here in South Oz, one of the local councils pumps storm water into an aquifer. However this is less a simple act of restoration, rather they are using the aquifer as a very large filter and store. They withdraw roughly what they add. However their ability to use otherwise unusable storm water means they save a lot of water form other sources. We have serious water issues down this part of the planet.

Long term I do wonder if they could be considered to be depleting the aquifer's ability to hold pollutants and sediment - eventually clogging it up. Thus deleting another natural resource. Nothing is easy.

[Enginerd]

Water is sometimes added directly to aquifers through injection wells, but usually only for a few specialized applications. If they're not drilled into a water supply aquifer, they can be used as disposal sites for treated wastewater, stormwater runoff, or other relatively benign waste streams, and wells that are particularly well isolated from water supplies can be used as disposal sites for hazardous wastes. They're used for on-site remediation of groundwater pollution in a pump and treat system (just what it sounds like: contaminated water is pumped out of the aquifer and treated; the treated water is then reinjected). As Francis Vaughan says, they're also used as short-term storage for future use. In the Middle East, I think they're used for groundwater recharge, but I'm not aware of any injection wells for this purpose in the US. If you're curious, you can find details on the EPA's injection well regulations regulations here.

Originally Posted by squeegee

Yes, some governments do refill aquifers. Where I live, this is done though percolation ponds, though any large water holding storage will refill the aquifer below it.

Yes and no - remember that sedimentary deposits tend to be layered, with different properties depending on what kind of material you have and how it was deposited. Their ability to hold and transmit water varies layer-by-layer as well, so you have different kinds of aquifers. Percolation ponds will allow water to flow into unconfined aquifers (see the illustration here), but that may not be the same aquifer that local wells are tapping. It's more common to discharge to an area that's not hydraulically connected to your water supply just to minimize the risk of contamination if something goes wrong.

Originally Posted by aceplace57

I don't have time to hunt up a cite. I have read that water in aquifers is very pure from filtering through the various sediment layers.

Pumping river water into a aquifer could have unexpected consequences. It would need some study before trying it.

Groundwater doesn't typically require the same level of treatment that surface water does - it's less likely to contain particulates or bacterial contamination. However, it's more likely to contain higher concentrations of dissolved solids (calcium and sodium salts, metals, sulfur, etc.), so it's not an either-or proposition.

Pumping river water directly into an aquifer (close to a supply well) would give you the worst of both worlds, and strikes me as a Very Bad Idea.

[md2000]

The other problem is hat in many of these aquifers, the water percolates slowly through porous rock. You can't just add half a river's flow and have it fill the rock layer like it was an empty tank. If the water is not addednear where it was taken out, there could be decades or longer for the water to go from the more wet area where recharge happens, to the area where it is most exploited.

OTOH, the "porous rock" is a natural filter for a lot of the non-soluble contaminants - silt, bacteria, etc. The downside is that fine silt will eventually plug your input hole, slowing the rate at which water percolates inward. You can't replace thousands of square miles and thousands of years of slow seepage with a pond and some drill holes, especially when some farmers are probably pumping as much onto one farm as you are trying to put back in for the whole aquifer.

[Snnipe 70E]

Originally Posted by aceplace57

I don't have time to hunt up a cite. I have read that water in aquifers is very pure from filtering through the various sediment layers.

Pumping river water into a aquifer could have unexpected consequences. It would need some study before trying it.

In Santa Clara county in CAlif most of the water comes from wells and the water is anything but pure. My advice to people is do not dring the water with out chewing it first. In the 50's it was noticed that the valley floor was dropping because of water being removed from the aquifers. Various dams were build to catch the run off rain. Then through out the year water is released from the dams to peculation ponds where the water refills the aquifers. So it is being done, and has been done for years.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Minneapolis, MN does this, sort of.

We get our water from the Missiwwippi River, and we have created several artificial lakes upstream, restrained by dams. So rainwater that runs into the river is trapped in these lakes, and while there, a ceretain amount of it will filter through to the aquifer instead of quickly flowing downstream. No idea how much this amounts to, but it has to be more than if the rainwater was just moving downstream.

(The actual purpose of these lake reservoirs is to maintain the supply of water for the municipal water system -- when there is a severe drought, the City will give instructions for their dams to be lowered and let some of the water stored in those lakes out into the river. That lowers the lake level, and gets complaints from people who have cabins around the lake -- most of them don't even realize that the City of Minneapolis created/maintains that lake in the first place.)

[Boyo Jim]

Originally Posted by t-bonham@scc.net

Minneapolis, MN does this, sort of.

We get our water from the Missiwwippi River, and we have created several artificial lakes upstream, restrained by dams. So rainwater that runs into the river is trapped in these lakes, and while there, a ceretain amount of it will filter through to the aquifer instead of quickly flowing downstream. No idea how much this amounts to, but it has to be more than if the rainwater was just moving downstream.

(The actual purpose of these lake reservoirs is to maintain the supply of water for the municipal water system -- when there is a severe drought, the City will give instructions for their dams to be lowered and let some of the water stored in those lakes out into the river. That lowers the lake level, and gets complaints from people who have cabins around the lake -- most of them don't even realize that the City of Minneapolis created/maintains that lake in the first place.)

Yeah, but pretty much every large metro area does this, don't they? And they aren't refilling the aquifers as a matter of conscious choice -- it's just happenstance that it works out that way, correct?

[obfusciatrist]

Anaheim recharges their aquifer from the Santa Ana River as well as using purified sewer water.

[md2000]

Originally Posted by Snnipe 70E

In the 50's it was noticed that the valley floor was dropping because of water being removed from the aquifers.

This is the cause of the famous Aqua Alta, where spring and fall tides will flood San Marco square in Venice with up to a foot of water. Large industries in Mestre on the mainland were pumping out huge amounts of groundwater causing subsidence. This was halted decades ago, and the land is very very slowly rising again.

[shiftless]

Originally Posted by black rabbit

Or Brawndo. It's what plants crave!

I came all the way to the pit, into this thread to drop this nugget of wisdom. Beaten by a rabbit.

[sunstone]

Arizona has the Central Arizona Project. (Finally you hear something good about my state!)

You can read about it and types of aquifer recharging here:
http://www.cap-az.com/operations/rec...inarizona.aspx

In addition there are small percolation basins to have excess water drain into local aquifers. Just across the street from my house is a basin that collects all of the water from the local neighborhood and makes it seep back into the ground. It also makes a good place for Spadefoot Toads to mate, so we get both thunder in the sky and on the ground during mating season.

[Lust4Life]

Diverting water from a river is all very well, but isn't there at least one river in the U.S. that has so many demands made on it by urban centers along its route that it delivers virtually no water to the sea ?

Apologies if wrong .

[md2000]

Originally Posted by Lust4Life

Diverting water from a river is all very well, but isn't there at least one river in the U.S. that has so many demands made on it by urban centers along its route that it delivers virtually no water to the sea ?

Apologies if wrong .

The Colorado? When it crosses the border at Mexico there's almost nothing left?

[Lust4Life]

Originally Posted by md2000

The Colorado? When it crosses the border at Mexico there's almost nothing left?

I think you could be right.

[squeegee]

Originally Posted by Snnipe 70E

In Santa Clara county in CAlif most of the water comes from wells and the water is anything but pure. My advice to people is do not dring the water with out chewing it first.

Coming in late, but: you want people to chew water? I assume this is a typo, but what did you mean?