I live in the country near Stoneham. There are lines of trees dying on the hilltops out here. Our house has a well. If the well runs dry, will the aquifer fill again with some good rainfalls? Are wells running dry in Central Texas?

The Navasota River at Hwy 6 had a huge algae bloom yesterday. The surface of the water was green as far as you could see and this water appears to not be moving, very sluggish and shallow.

About 6 million acre feet are pumped out per year, about .3 million acre feet are recharded (under normal conditions.

Consider the drought, there is probably more water being pumped out (for irrigaton, livestock, etc.) and much less rainfall to contribute to aquifer recharge.

what is recharded mean?

so you're saying it takes 27 years of rain to put back into what we take out in a year?

how much is in our aquafier, anyway?

*recharged*. This means that when we take water out, how long does it take for rainfall to make it back into the groundwater system.

We are in the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer.

There is not a good way to inventory the aquifer, as it is difficult to determine exactly where it begins, ends, depth, etc. The water is literally stored within the ground, so it's not liek there's just a pool of water down there that we can say "oh it's X wide by X high by X deep" and get the volume. THe best way to measure impacts on growndwater is to evaluated usage and then look at the impact that it has cause on groundwater levels.

And yes, we are using fresh water way faster than it can be recharged in the aquifers.



[This message has been edited by Max06 (edited 8/5/2011 3:15p).]

Somethings fishy about that math.. just sayin.

If you're talking about the Municipal water supply, it's the Simsboro Sand formation of the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. Our best hydrogeologic estimates are that we can expect about 103,000 acre-feet per year in recharge, with a minor amount of drawdown in our well columns. Right now, permits are issued to about 10% over that amount, but actual annual pumping is much less than that, around 65,000 acre-feet.

We are doing our best to manage the water supply so it's a dependable water source in perpetuity.

Waterworks....What is the average Na content and SAR of the Carrizo Wilcox in the central Texas area?

[This message has been edited by Yuccadoo (edited 8/5/2011 6:57p).]

Yucca, what happened with your salinity tests etc you were having rerun?

Bryan and College Station get their water from wells that are about 3000 feet deep. This water takes many, many years to filter down from rainfall. A short drought will not likely affect the water supply from such deep wells. Smaller shallower wells may be affected much more quickly by a drought like this one. The problem with B/CS water now is that usage exceeds the pumping ability of the wells and the storage capacity.

That's my understanding-maybe a geologist on here can correct me if I'm incorrect.

Yuccadoo - for the Simsboro, it depends how far downdip you go - the deeper, the more saline. Our wells are in northern Brazos County, at 2800-3000 feet deep, and the salinity is around 500 ppm, easily in the potable range. But further downdip it gets more saline rapidly - we have results of a test well drilled near University Drive, it was 4,000 feet deep, and the salinity was around 4,000 ppm. Not nearly sea-water salinity, but way out of the potable range.

Note, it's been a long time since I looked at those test well numbers, if I'm off I'll post a correction on Monday.

SideshowBob - you're correct, except for one aspect. The bottleneck in our water production and delivery system right now is the cooling towers. We will make some repairs this winter that will make a significant difference, and then the third cooling tower will be designed in FY-12 and built in FY-13.

When that's done, the limiting factor will be well production capacity.

Thanks waterworks.

I sometimes wonder if I will live to see the day when people will marvel at the fact that it was common practice to dump drinkable water out on the ground so that the grass around our homes would look pretty.

SideshowBob - I have to believe you're right, not only do we dump drinking water on the grass, we use hydrocarbon fuel to cut it, then dump the clippings in a landfill.

What we're trying to do is switch irrigation usage over to non-potable water. First step is the project that's underway right now, we're building a system to pump treated wastewater effluent up to Veteran's Park to irrigate the playing fields - should be complete in September.

so Bob, no offense meant here, but how do you manage your lawn? Do you xeriscape? I've often thought we should have 2 water systems. One for drinking, the other for nondrinking water (toilets, irrigation, etc...). Of course, the cost associated with doing something like that would be extraordinary.

[This message has been edited by csrealist (edited 8/6/2011 8:14a).]

I'm watering it right now.

Waterworks--What are the rules/regs for gray water? For example, our washing machine is in the garage. Would it be allowable for me to have a temporary line to run the water drained off onto my yard and garden instead of down the drain? The water is safe for the lawns, so it seems reasonable. And +1 to CoCS for running the non-potable lines to Veteran’s Park. A good use of resources.

Hmmm, I know waste water in the sanitary system is already being treated, so that's not an additional expense. But piping and pumping to get to VP could be.

I've not run the numbers, but it would seem, as a WAG, that shallow--100-300'--well and a collection basin might better suit VP. The water would be brackish, and not at all potable, but would suffice. At least from the sort of "head" capacity the irrigation system would suggest needing.

Of course, when the la niña passes, all this dry-land planning might look silly with the Carter Creek watershed full of water to the park edges, too. Just part of the Tao of water; either too much or too little.

RSA - Yes, grey water systems are allowed, I have one at my house that catches the clothes washer, the sink in the laundry room, and most of my roof. It's 500 gallons, and admittedly, not getting much from the roof lately, but normally it works well. The key is you can't run anything to it that could be pathogenic, ie, containing fecal matter. If you want more info, Jennifer Nations has lots of helpful hints.

Capn Mac - Yes, it's costing about $2.5 M to get the reclaimed water to VPAC - we had to build a tank at the park for storage, and the pipes and pumps to fill the tank. Also, we had to install pumps at the tank to pressurize the irrigation system.

And yes, eventually our goal is to have reclaimed water all over the City, it will take a lot of time and money - but as the value of water continues to increase, this concept becomes more viable.

Regarding shallow wells, right around the CS area we don't any good very shallow water - you have to get down at least 800' for good quality water. For example, when Castlegate was built, the plan was to keep the entry ponds full with well water - but the shallow well had so much sulphur that it stunk bad, and the pumps impellers would be eaten up in a month or so. Great concept, but not practical in CS, especially for irrigation.

Waterworks--Cool! I had been looking at something along those lines but I was not sure whether or not the city would allow it. I see my next home improvement project!

3000'feet deep? That's well past the simsboro, no? If so, what aquifer? I'm pretty sure I'm in the gulf coast aquifer and I'm at 315'.

????

Oh. I'm well southeast of cs in Waller country but icant imagine residential wells being more than about 250' in cs. That would cost a homeowner a fortune otherwise.

I'm pretty sure I'm tapped into the Evangeline.

quote:

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3000'feet deep?

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Yes.

I'm not sure which aquifer, simsboro, willcox, or gulf coast, etc., but the wells are in the 2500ft to 3000ft or deeper range.

The 3,000 feet deep wells are the Simsboro wells, in the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, that waterworks is referring to.

Interesting. Is it a volume thing? Because it could be tapped shallower.

The depth below the surface of a given aquifer can vary by location. Geologic formations generally aren’t perfectly horizontal. If we took water from the Carrizo-Wilcox farther west in its recharge zone the wells could be shallower. But the aquifer gets deeper (farther below the ground) as you go towards the coast.

Thank you WW.
I'd forgotten that a lot of the "surface" water here at shallower depths tends to be sulfurous or metallic.

Capn Mac - I should have mentioned earlier that you can get lucky and find decent water at fairly shallow depths, I know a guy in Foxfire who has a shallow well that's OK to water his yard. Also, you know the fountain in front of Boston's and Abuelo's? That's fed from a shallow well in the area. But like somebody else mentioned, it's very unpredictable.

Ok, WW, wow.

The drilled a well into what used to be the CS landfill and got good water?

Hey, I believe it from what the excavation contractors were griping about cutting through compacted clay linings (to then hit a strata of black poly bags) when they were building over there. I know there are some strata over there associated with the Burton Creek watershed, too.

Makes me all nostalgic to go search up Mike Halbouty's geologic map of Brazos County again. Perceiving what is unseen beneath the perceived is fascinating stuff at times.

Capn Mac - there used to be a landfill over on University? The only one I'm aware of is off Hwy 6, kind of behind the Silk Stocking.

And I agree, trying to figure out how an aquifer will behave is endlessly interesting, one of our big challenges is to find out how accurate the State's (TX Water Development Board's) groundwater models are. They're used to predict recharge and drawdown, and are the key to our "Modeled Available Groundwater" numbers used to manage the aquifer.

I'm a MS in geology but am unfamiliar with that aquifer and it's thickness. What I am trying to ask is why go thousands of feet when water of similar quality is available at hundreds of feet. That's why I was curious if it was a volume thing. Obviously the city pumps more out than I do on a daily basis.

A turf farm down the road from me pumps the same formation but their wells are 75 - 100 feet deeper I assumed it was for drawdown reasons since they pump out thousands of gallons a day.

Jed - it's volume and dependability. We can easily get over 3,000 gpm from a Simsboro well, but our two shallow wells (one Sparta, one Carrizo) do good to hit 1,000 especially in the summer.

Where's the turf farm? The big one on FM 159, south of Allen Farm, has wells in the Brazos River Alluvium. To get Simsboro water shallower than 2,000 feet it would have to be in Robertson County.

WW,
Yeah, back in the 70's that was a "dump", which made sense then, the SS holding tank there at Timber & University was in the boonies at the time. It was functionally closed when I got here in '78m but locals were still dumping plastic-bagged trash there.

City (I think) covered it over about the time Hilton bought their parcel over there--do not know if that was a quid pro quo or not.

Which is why I was some surprised to see all that development go in later. (But, I was also surprised when they built all those duplexes and apartments along Autumn down by the lift Station, too.

My office was involved in the conversion of State Farm to Gardner Jewlers and the AV building, so it was fascinating to see a scraper-excavator over across the street suddenly start peeling black poly-e bags up (which was a smell to rival the lift station).

Was not a big landfill, none of the hotels are on it, but that front complex with the fountain is right on top.