planetwater

Bei Bauarbeiten am Finanzministerium in Wiesbaden ist es zu einem spektakulären Unfall gekommen: unerwartet wurde ein gespannter Grundwasserleiter angebohrt. Das unter Druck stehende Wasser bahnte sich seinen Weg durch das Bohrloch nach oben, was in einer relativ imposanten Fontäne resultierte:

Das Wiesbadener Tagblatt berichtet hier und hier. Siehe auch Berichte in der Sueddeutschen und vom Hessischen Rundfunk. Interessant ist dass bei spaeteren Meldungen von einer “Wasserblase” die Rede ist, und nicht mehr von einem gespannten Grundwasserleiter.

Hier ist eine Fotostrecke.

Ist jemand vor Ort und kann Erfahrungen schildern?

Drilling

There is no water, there is no oil, there is no other mineral without drilling. Even open pit mines need bore holes for exploration and subsequent geostatistical analysis. Drilling a hole certainly is no easy task. It can be tricky, it can be frustrating, but like with other similar things, it is highly rewarding when the hole is completed, and maybe the well installed, developed, and working. Maybe, one day, I’ll write about my drilling experiences in detail. For now, here are a few links related to some exciting aspects of drilling:

• The International Deep Ocean Drilling Program with their immensely cool drill ship has created a Google Earth Visualization of their drill locations.

• Wired has put up some general information about oil drilling, after Chevron completed a 30,000ft (~10.000m) hole in the Gulf of Mexico. Here is a sketch of the layers that are drilled through, and here is the full article.

• Probably very little drilling is needed for mountain top mining. The Bush-administration has recently lifted rules in favour of mountain top mining.

Impacts on Environment

Germany just agreed on reducing emission of climate gases — in the future. At the same time, according to lighterfootsteps.com, there are five things that are worse than global warming: the end of cheap oil, the collapse of ocean ecosystems, the coming water crisis, deforestation, and nuclear weapons. Of course, this is also nothing new, the latter two items for example are the classic stomping grounds of the Green Party in Germany — or maybe even the reason why they exist.

Speaking of ocean ecosystems, the amount of garbage introduced into oceans, especially the Mediterranean, is extreme. Note: not only garbage, but also war destroys ecosystems.

Via the “goole earth blog” I found out that the Popular Science Magazine has an issue dedicated to the “future of the environment“, accompanied by a google earth layer to highlight where areas of substantial impact are.

The Loetschberg Basis Tunnel is completed and the first train rode through it. This tunnel together with the Gotthard tunnel are the two main tunnels through the Alps in Switzerland, connecting the north (Germany) with the south (Italy). The Gotthard tunnel is still under construction and will not be completed for another few more years.

The Loetschberg tunnel is about 35 kilometers long, and will be used for cargo trains putting trucks on the train, and for high speed passenger trains. Cars will still go over the mountains. Before the construction about 1.5 million trucks travelled through Switzerland in north-south direction. After completion, the number is expected to drop to 650,000. Besides these environmental savings, the ride through the tunnel will save time as it is twice as fast as the ride over the mountain and will be cheaper than the truck prices for truck companies

How is this related to water? — As any tunnel they had huge water inflows at various stages of drilling, and there is a pretty neat water collection system in place now for the normally infiltrating groundwater.

In 2003 I was part of a field trip to the south portal in Raron, Switzerland. We saw the drilling machine in action, and the geotechnical lab and the rock-recycling facility.

The ZDF has a movie on it; The news from the tagesschau; The news from the handelsblatt; The news from the NZZ; The news from the independent;