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Continue reading →: Groundwater Whack-a-Mole
In two high-profile cases, efforts to block the flow of contaminated groundwater resulted in short-term relief – until water tables rose and leaks started popping up all over the place. It’s groundwater whack-a-mole. Red and Bonita Mines Near Silverton, CO, owners of a metallic mine with an acid mine drainage problem…
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Continue reading →: The Ins and Outs of Fracking and Underground Waste Injection Wells
When the Akron Beacon-Journal Online publishes its updated interactive map of active, permitted, and producing oil and gas wells in Ohio, it places another map right below it. The second map shows underground waste injection wells. These two maps belong together because underground injection wells are used to dispose of…
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Continue reading →: Soil Anisotropy: Mechanisms and Hydrologic Consequences
Introduction Anisotropy, which is the opposite of “isotropy,” is a term used to denote preferential flow direction in soils and other geologic materials. If soil consisted of perfectly spherical grains, flow rates would be isotropic – the same in all directions, other factors being equal. Soil doesn’t consist of perfectly…
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Continue reading →: Deja Vu: Remembering the 1947 Texas City (Fertilizer) Explosion
The 1947 Texas City Disaster is known as the worst U.S. industrial accident and the largest non-nuclear explosion in history. The disaster, like the recent West, Texas disaster (video), was preceded by a fire. Nearby firefighters and spectators were among many of those killed or injured. The Texas City incident…
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Continue reading →: The Gas We Eat
Nearly half of the world’s population owes its existence to food grown with industrial nitrogen fertilizer produced from natural gas. (1) In 2004, journalist Richard Manning published an intriguing, if somewhat controversial, article in Harpers magazine called The Oil We Eat: Tracing the food chain back to Iraq. Manning notes…
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Continue reading →: EPA to Enbridge: Dredge More Submerged Oil from the Kalamazoo River
On July 25 2010, the 30-inch diameter Enbridge 6B pipeline ruptured near Marshall, Michigan. Roughly 1 million gallons of diluted bitumen (DilBit) from Canadian oil sands spilled into Talmadge Creek, a tributary to the Kalamazoo River. Nearly three years later, the cleanup continues. Last week, the U.S. EPA issued a final…
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Continue reading →: Dubai Flare Gas Slated for Motor Fuel
In the city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is a partnership between the city and the national oil company that will create a project to capture flare gas (see previous post), compress it, and use it for motor fuel. An excerpt from the press release: Emirates Gas LLC (EMGAS), a…
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Continue reading →: The Letter: Closing Remarks from Outgoing Energy Secretary Steven Chu
Picking Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu to lead the Department of Energy signaled President Obama’s committment to having science influence policy and scientists running some of the government. Contrast Secretary Chu’s credentials with those of Gearge W. Bush’s first Energy Secretary, Attorney and Republican Party leader Spencer Abraham. In…
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Continue reading →: Oil Well Natural Gas Flares Seen from Space
From the blog Random Policy: Waste Not, Want Not, Michael Cain presents an interesting NASA night time satalite image of North America. The continent is dark except for lights emitted from cities and other sources, notabley, waste gas flares from the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale oil fields. Near the…
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Continue reading →: Dustbowl Adaptations: Conservation, Irrigation
The excellent Ken Burns documentary, “Dustbowl” (see previous post) featured personal accounts of many individuals who experienced the disaster first hand. The film emphasized a mostly non-technical, human perspective that, I thought, did a good job of placing us into the shoes of those who endured incredibly tough circumstances –…
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