We love to hear the great things Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization is doing around the world – a charity we sponsor through sales of our eco-friendly products.
Here’s an article about their latest success in Australia, where major fires and droughts are causing a lot of problems.
“LAEO Tech Team Finds Water in Drought-stressed Queensland, Australia. Recently, our Tech Team flew to Australia to work with business colleagues to help site and drill water bores in New South Wales and Queensland. This part of Australia has been suffering from extended severe drought as well as experiencing their worst fires in history, destroying hundreds of miles of forest.
Australian news covered this, interviewing farmers and ranchers. One farmer, Angus Ferrier, called the drought a “creeping catastrophe.” 55 towns in Queensland alone have totally run out of water, or soon will. Stanthorpe, near Angus’s farm, now has to truck in 42 truckloads of water daily at a monthly cost of $800,000.
One of our colleagues contacted Angus. His large fruit farm has six operating wells, each producing only .1 liters/second (180 liters/hour), a mere dribble compared to what his farm needs. His water dams are dry. When asked if he would be open to siting and drilling a new well, using LAEO/GIS Analytics mapping and ground-truthing, he said, of course, but he doubted it would work. The problem is that all the regional shallow wells are going dry, there are very few deeper wells. The region is named the Granite Belt because it is underlain by 1,200-plus feet deep, hard granite. No drillers are willing to experiment drilling through the hard rock only “hoping” to find water. What if we had the tech to site water-bearing fractures deep within the granite and to predict depth and flow-rate? You would have to prove it, said the conservative but realistic Angus. Our colleague offered to do so.
We sited three bores for Angus who picked a site near a dry dam. We started drilling on February 1st. The drill rig pumped clouds of granite dust into the air. Late on the first day, the dust disappeared and they contacted first water at 90 meters, the exact depth we had predicted. The flow rate there was 1,800 liters/hour, already matching the total of all other wells combined that were previously drilled on Angus’ property. They continued the hard drilling towards the next predicted water-bearing fracture at 220 meters depth. The drilling was very challenging. The granite was tough, but the team persevered, impressed already by our having found water at 90 meters.
Several days later, after taking a break to repair some rig equipment, drilling continued and at about 220 meters, here is what they found…”
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