Aquifer recharge

• Guest post
• 6 years ago
• Categories: disaster, Environment, farming, water
• Tags: aquifers, canterbury, ecan, John Hodgson

This Guest Post is by John Hodgson, a long time angler, and active member of the NZ Salmon Anglers Association. 

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The fol­low­ing is a sim­ple demon­stra­tion to help peo­ple un­der­stand “Na­tures pro­cesses” for wa­ter re­newal of the Can­ter­bury Plains. Put wa­ter in the sink to near the top. Then us­ing a veg­etable drain­ing colan­der im­merse in the wa­ter and watch how quickly the in­com­ing wa­ter fills the colan­der. Next, lift up and ob­serve how fast the wa­ter drains. What you are see­ing is how na­ture’s plumb­ing sys­tem works in re­gards to aquafier wa­ter recharge.

This is the sys­tem of the Can­ter­bury plains and has worked sat­is­fac­to­rily for man and beast etc., and has had suf­fi­cient un­der­ground reserves of wa­ter along the foot hills of the Alps to main­tain a flow for the Aquafiers for sev­eral years when rain­fall and snow is at a low ebb. The po­si­tion now is that there are hun­dreds of deep bore wells, that have over 10 or more years drained the nat­u­ral reserves of wa­ter so the sink is empty. The con­se­quence of this is go­ing to be a mas­sive disas­ter.

The first be­ing no drink­able non-treated wa­ter and each year be­com­ing worse. It is false in­for­ma­tion that the rivers are dry be­cause of low rain­fall. The cause is ex­ces­sive draw off of the nat­u­ral wa­ter reserves by the dairy cow in­dus­try. (Ir­ri­ga­tion for agri­cul­ture is not a prob­lem, it is sea­sonal.)

Of the many opin­ions ex­pressed just lately about our wa­ter and no mat­ter how cor­rect and gen­uine they are, no change to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is pos­si­ble un­til the deep well own­ers are re­quired to lift their pumps three me­tres per year un­til equi­lib­rium is reached. It has taken less than ten years to get to this very se­ri­ous state of af­fairs and will take at least fif­teen years to start re­cov­er­ing.

The laugh­able side of the sit­u­a­tion is that the present Na­tional Gov­ern­ment col­lapsed the En­vi­ron­men­tal Coun­cil. They put in Com­mis­sion­ers to al­lo­cate wa­ter fairly, and have failed in their re­spon­si­bil­ity. We are now back to the ear­lier Coun­cil’s dis­cus­sion that the wa­ter takes are all over al­lo­cated. The sad side is that many farm­ers to­wards the coast­line who at­tended the many zone com­mit­tee meet­ings are go­ing to be dis­ad­van­taged to have enough wa­ter to run their farms and they will be fight­ing the up­land wa­ter tak­ers.

The se­ri­ous side is that as the mean wa­ter ta­ble drops, the over­load of pol­lu­tants from dairy­ing will con­tam­i­nate pro­gres­sively the wa­ter sup­ply for many com­mu­ni­ties un­til it reaches Christchurch proper. The Christchurch City Coun­cil has knowl­edge of this, and since the earth­quake era has been re­plac­ing dam­aged bores, but they are go­ing much deeper so the pol­lu­tion fac­tor will not show as early as with the shal­lower wells. The wa­ter bot­tling com­pa­nies need to be aware that the present pu­rity of sup­ply is in jeop­ardy.

In all of 70 years of be­ing able to vote in a gen­eral elec­tion I don’t re­call such a bad sit­u­a­tion as that which we have at the present time. Even the 1951 strike ac­tion and the Hol­land Gov­ern­ment re­sponse was tame com­pared to the present time. We are now deal­ing with the sur­vival of Can­ter­bury.

The cause of this se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion is sim­ply the present Gov­ern­ment*, the Over­seas In­vest­ment Of­fice and the Banks that urged farm­ers to go into a very large debt re­pay­ment sys­tem with the prom­ise of an abun­dant wa­ter sup­ply. The Gov­ern­ment used in­ad­e­quate wa­ter sci­ence to start with and is fail­ing to recog­nise that many farm­ing units are go­ing to fail be­cause of debt re­pay­ment. It will be the Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­ity to ac­cept the debt of failed farms and pay the money­len­ders. It is also ironic the Gov­ern­ment is giv­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to­wards the re­build of Christchurch city, but ig­nores the on­com­ing disas­ter that has al­ready started by the de­struc­tion of our once fa­mous arte­sian wa­ters.

Update:

What Needs To Be Done Immediately.

1. No deepening of any bore wells without authority. This covers many shallow wells of less than 70 metres.

2. Instructions to the deep bore well’s owners to start lifting their pumps.

3. Extensive and accurate assessments of recording factors, and public recognition of the bore well holders of consents that they are doing what is required.

4. A statement from the Christchurch Council and the District Councils of how they will supply potable water for use by the public when the water becomes contaminated.

5. Will the councils confiscate the Canterbury Water scheme to supply what is needed?

6. What is the emergency profile for the Canterbury Health Board?

7. Fire fighting is able to use any water, (polluted or otherwise) as long as it is water.

8. So that people will be able to come to terms with the diminishing water flows, a cross section map showing bore depth relative to mean sea level starting from the foothills to the sea. The public are entitled to know because it is their water resource as well as private enterprise.”

* this post was written before the change of government in October 2017.