Thursday, September 18, 2008
You don’t miss the water till the well runs dry
I wonder if people in the wealthier worlds would appreciate their unsupportable water practices (personal, agricultural, industrial) if they went for 2 summer months without running water: buying drinking water or loading up at friends’ homes, borrowing washing machines or using public Laundromats, borrowing showers and re-learning how to sponge bathe, and loading up gallons of nearby lake water for the toilet and a few precious plants while watching the fruit trees crisp in the summer heat. More to the point, I wonder if people (myself included, even after these aforementioned 2 months) would change their practices if they really and truly got it that inexpensive access to seemingly unlimited water resources is a dream and that we are in the process of slowly, painfully, waking up.
Just do a google search on global water shortage or something like it. This is not new news, but it is a dream from which we do not want to wake.
The following chronicle was originally written to clarify my thinking about the geology and groundwater access in the area in which I now live, as a result of a deep (422’) new well being drilled on my new property. But it is becoming more than that. It is becoming something of a document to share via this blogsite, and perhaps also by ‘letters to editors’; and more importantly, it is becoming the foundation of a desire to offer my services as a geologist to the population where I now live, so that we can all become more educated in this regard. As you’ll see below, this is an area where lakes and rivers abound in a semi-arid climate, so in the same way that the deeper local groundwater issues are obscured by a wealthy water-based tourism, the vastly deeper global water crisis is obscured by our collective, Canadian, relative wealth.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008 – Thursday, September 18, 2008
1. I moved into my newly purchased little house on 0.99 acres above White Lake on July 12, 2008. I had opted not to have the water in a shallow well (about 25 feet) checked for quantity and quality, as I had heard from the previous owner via the realtors that he had never run out of water. But I'd also heard from a neighbour that previous people at the house (who were irrigating the garden) had run out of water in past years. So I knew there could or would be issues, and I decided not to spend the $1000 or so for inspection, and just deal with a problem if or when it occurred, though I could not anticipate that it would occur as seriously or as suddenly as it did! However, that is still my caveat emptor.
2. Had I had it inspected, and had the inspector advised me that 2 weeks after moving in that the shallow well would be dry and that a month later I could/would be having 422' drilled to the tune of $16,000 (no estimate yet on pump installation) I would have sought a lower purchase price. That lower price may not have lowered my down payment much, though the mortgage would likely show a small reduction. Thus my current situation of the cost of the new well and pump could be the same as if it had been inspected...
3. The shallow well obtains surface water infiltrated from beneath the little stream on the property. When it went dry at the end of July, I began talking with other folks in the area, especially the neighbour who helped me by arranging to have 4000 gallons dumped into that well with the local fire truck. In those conversations I heard that water shortages even with deep drilled wells in the area were commonplace.
4. Finally, there is the possibility that no-one, not even an inspector, may have been able to anticipate that the shallow well would leach its water back into the soil once it (the soil) had become dry and the stream had dried up. This I saw for myself in the 3 instances when water was pumped in (4000 gallons in 3 increments in a 10 day period), and I watched the level drop by several hundreds of gallons in a matter of a day, with no usage but some toilet flushing!
5. In all this time, my training and experience as a geologist was on high alert: I could see on nearby White Lake road that the bedrock was a relatively thin-layered metamorphic rock that extended many dozens of miles north, east, and west of here. I anticipated that it would not be difficult drilling (in contrast to granite, for example), and in fact at about 100’ down, the driller told me it was called a “soft rock” by drillers.
6. The “overburden”, like that of much of the region here, was glacially produced; in this case unsorted till from the lateral moraine of the glacier that formerly occupied the White Lake valley. In other locations, delta sediments show where former rivers were draining into the glacier-filled valley; this is not the case on the hillside on the north side of White Lake valley where I live. Once the drilling started, the overburden was found to be about 22’ deep which surprised me at first, having thought it could be closer to 50’ but I’d done no study to determine this, it was just a guess. But there is a small stream that runs through my property, from NW to SE, and though I have not seen it run when fully fed, such as in the early spring, I expect that it might die out completely not far below my property line. I have yet to look for a possible drainage site where it runs into the smaller of the two White Lakes immediately south of me, but will do so soon. But as I looked at the ravine that occupies about ¼ of the west side of my sloping property, it is far wider than the stream would warrant, so I figured that in post-glacial times, it was a much larger drainage system and could have scoured off some of the overburden in this spot.
7. The drilling then proceeded through 400’ of greenish-black, crumbly bedrock, possibly green from chlorite, indicating this was a low-grade metamorphosed former seabed, looking somewhat like phyllite in places, the original sedimentary rock being possibly Paleozoic in age (TBD)? At various depths, the flow of water into the well was tested, and found to be about ¼ gpm at 320-360’, then ½ gpm at 360-400’, then finally ½ gpm at 422’ before pressure fracturing. As of this writing, with no pump in the well, we do not know what its recharge rate will be. The pressure fracturing opened the rock enough for 1200 gallons of injected water to rapidly disappear from the pipe, and the experienced drillers were confident that the recharge rate would then be better than ½ gpm.
8. I had made a fundamentally erroneous assumption when I saw this metamorphic bedrock in thin (up to 3” thick) schistose layers. I not only assumed that it would be easy drilling, but I assumed that the recharge rate would be higher than ½ gpm (not quantitatively, just hoping!). Finding that wasn’t the case, and recalling that that people in this area frequently had water problems opened my eyes to the broader region…this bedrock may simply have very low/slow permeability!
9. My land is at about 1598’ elevation where the well is (need to measure for sure, using GPS?), and the average elevation of White Lake is about 1530’, thus it seemed reasonable to expect that the water table under my land is at about, or less than, 70’ deep. The driller estimated a static water level of 100’, so that may be consistent with a lower current lake level at the end of August. Again, in my hope and quasi-naiveté, I’d assumed that the driller would not have to go much beyond the water table to find a flow sufficient to stop drilling (and stop the financial hemorrhage that I was certainly anticipating!)
10. This region is rich with lakes and rivers; it is also a semi-arid climate with normal snow levels of 3-6’ (to be verified) of snow in the lower elevations, and deeper snow forming the snow pack on the peaks. This snow pack melts in the spring, filling the rivers and lakes to capacity and causes frequent low-land flooding. And yet 3-4 months of mostly dry summer follows, and the wells on the hillsides dry up. So what is the overall groundwater picture here?
11. Mountains of metamorphic bedrock are incised by rivers and lakes with flood plains and some marshes, respectively. Lower slopes of the mountains are mantled by glacial till (lateral moraines), and in some cases, pro-glacial sorted sediment. Where are the wells that run dry? I’m going to guess that they’re like mine, on the hillsides. One well high above my place is 700’; the one next door but one property is 350’ and is slightly higher on the slope. Depths of wells themselves do not indicate the elevation of the water table of course, but the well logs may, or should, reveal this level, and this is what I would like to pursue.
12. New information came from my conversation with the pump installer…saying that people at the NE end of the White Lake valley do not have as frequent low-water experiences as those at the opposite end, where the valley empties into the broader valley containing the Trans Canada Highway. I am at the end of the valley near the highway. But I recall that as the northern end of the White Lake Rd loop climbs the north side of the valley slope, the bedrock changes from an approximate westward dip, to an eastward dip. And if that trend continues, underlying the hill/mountain toward the far NE end of the valley, then the impermeable bedrock may be trapping water between its layers, and allowing it to run down-dip. So I am somewhat high and dry in more ways than one!
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
...and a garden shall heal them...
ah gosh, I shouldn't try to speak for anyone else, but in my case, a garden, many gardens, have been healing me for as long as I can remember...some gardens are a fabulous wash of flowers under a living room window of a royal blue house...others have fed an entire family, year after year...and now I have found a new garden, or perhaps this garden has found me, has seduced me utterly, and I am its willing lover and worker bee. These pictures were taken first in mid-May, when I was shown the property (oh yes, it has a dwelling on it!) by a real estate agent, and more recently this week, with the last few pictures taken today, after a 4 hour marathon of weeding. There is much work ahead, but more than that, there is much pleasure already and I am thrilled to be the new steward of this piece of paradise...we shall heal each other, garden and I.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Life Goes On but Watch Your Back!
To the faithful reader(s) here...this is an unfortunately very TRUE story...read on and take care!
March 26, 2008
A story of fraud and theft
You don’t think it can or could or will happen to you, but it can and it could, and I hope it won’t. What follows is the bare-bones outline of my recent experience with credit card fraud and subsequent identity theft, or at least attempted identity theft. Fortunately little long-lasting harm was done but not without significant time, energy, and worry on my part, and follow up efforts on the part of banking and credit officials…to whom I am grateful for their patience in helping me unravel the story, as well as their comforting words as I reached the brink of panic, over and over again.
December 1 – 15, 2007: I spent a nice 2 weeks in the Cabo area of Baja, Mexico with # 2 daughter, C, followed by 3 weeks in the Yucatan, Mexico with # 3 daughter (also C), husband W, their shop and his family.
February 12 or so, 2008: I discovered (on line) a fraudulent charge on my main credit card. The name of the so called vendor was in Spanish, and I assumed that somewhere in the Cabo or Yucatan areas, someone had grabbed my number. I called the bank, the account was closed and credited, and a replacement card was arranged to be mailed to my new (changed since last fall) BC address.
February 20: an email came from fellow traveler C telling me that the 3 cards she had used in the Cabo area were hit with fraudulent charges. I checked another active card that I had with me in Mexico but had never used there, and it had been hit with the same vendor as my other one, so that was reported, closed, etc. While on the phone about this second card, I learned that other small charges had been made in the Florida area for car rentals.
March 3 2008: there had been no replacement card from the first bank by this date, so I called to find out the status. And here it got ugly: a replacement card had recently been used to attempt this account, and was being used again, even as I was on the phone with the bank fraud specialist! I can’t recall for sure now, but the card was either being attempted in Miami, FL, or in Bogota, Columbia, or both. But a woman had been on the phone with the bank for days repeatedly, speaking through a Spanish translator. As she did not have my US Social Security #, she was not successful in making charges. However, the account was successfully entered to the point where the address was changed to an address in Miami. At my repeated insistence that I knew NOTHING about a Florida address, the fraud specialist bumped my case up to the level of identity theft. The ID theft specialist then could/would not ascertain that I am the rightful owner of this account until I proved it in the presence of a bank manager, with the bank manager on the phone with the ID theft agencies. This had to be arranged for the following day. In the meantime, I discovered that all 3 of traveler C’s fraudulent charges were made under the same name as the major ones on my cards…so 5 charges by a “vendor” of the same name.
March 4, 2008: at the Credit Union bank, I presented the manager with the entire required ID, where she verified both her and my legitimacy with the ID theft agency by phone. At that time, US credit reporting agencies were informed not only about the fraud charges on the two accounts, but of the ID theft as well, and thus all access to my credit reporting, and all access to my credit was put under scrutiny. I was then given the option to go a step further and have an interview and credit report viewing by phone, with Identity Theft Assistance Corporation (ITAC), an agency that follows up on ID theft, and encourages the victims to offer their information and experience to law enforcement. Over the course of 3 phone conversations, this was finally completed last week.
March 3 – 24: I have now changed login names and passwords for ALL my bank and credit accounts will NEVER use unsecure wireless or internet café for any financial transaction, and as soon as my Canadian credit reporting reaches an adequate level, I will begin closing the US accounts (that’s a whole other story!)
But there are still some mysteries…
1. How did my 2nd card get hit in Mexico when I hadn’t even taken it out of my wallet? Did I go on line to check various account statuses? Yes, I usually do when I’m traveling for a long enough time that I need to make payments. Did I do so from my laptop on secure wireless? Yes. How about unsecure wireless? Very likely. How about a public computer? Also very likely…but if so, I know exactly which computer that would have been, and it is where the unsecure wireless is as well…a hotel that C and I were able to use on the beach, across from our hotel in San Jose del Cabo. Before that turns into an accusation, I may have used unsecured wireless in other locations (San Jose del Cabo, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Morelos, various airports) as I was still conducting an on-line college course (finishing one, starting the next one) in this entire 6 week period, but I cannot be sure if or where, I accessed any bank or credit account using unsecure wireless.
2. If the on-line checking I did there was the source of ingress into that 2nd account, could it also have been for my first one? Certainly, for the same reasons. How about C’s accounts? No, because while she used the cards while shopping, she was only away for 2 weeks and did not check balances or make on-line payments. And yet the same “vendor” showed up on all 5 of our accounts with about the same charge, $1200: ESTILO Y DEC EUGIN MELCHOR OCAMPO.
3. How did my first account’s replacement card get into someone else’s hands, whether Miami or Bogota? I asked my landlords here about the security of our (locked) mailbox. Short of theft by a mail delivery person, it’s secure. Could it have been stolen from the point of origin? Possibly, but that implies an “inside job” or mail theft from the bank, which could happen, but would be another level of reporting that I feel has to be left up to the bank to pursue. Lately we discovered that my new Canadian address, when taken down as the address to which the bank should send the replacement card, was done in error, and so it now seems likely that the card (along with subsequent letters from the bank looking for the fraud-affidavit of legitimacy) went wherever it went…and into the hands of a fraudulent user.
I didn’t make things easy for the banks or the credit reporting companies by the fact that I had moved from the US to Canada last year, that I had changed my BC address once, and that I had had to use C’s Seattle address in order to process the reporting because the agencies could not do so for non-US addresses. So between 2 Seattle addresses, and 2 BC addresses, I am still updating banks and credit reporting agencies.
This has all taken upwards of 10 hours of phone time, over the course of many days, and in total, a period of 2.5 months, but I believe now that the situation is at least stable. I have delivered this report to the Salmon Arm, BC RCMP, will do the same when next in the US.
So life goes on, but watch your backs folks!
March 26, 2008
A story of fraud and theft
You don’t think it can or could or will happen to you, but it can and it could, and I hope it won’t. What follows is the bare-bones outline of my recent experience with credit card fraud and subsequent identity theft, or at least attempted identity theft. Fortunately little long-lasting harm was done but not without significant time, energy, and worry on my part, and follow up efforts on the part of banking and credit officials…to whom I am grateful for their patience in helping me unravel the story, as well as their comforting words as I reached the brink of panic, over and over again.
December 1 – 15, 2007: I spent a nice 2 weeks in the Cabo area of Baja, Mexico with # 2 daughter, C, followed by 3 weeks in the Yucatan, Mexico with # 3 daughter (also C), husband W, their shop and his family.
February 12 or so, 2008: I discovered (on line) a fraudulent charge on my main credit card. The name of the so called vendor was in Spanish, and I assumed that somewhere in the Cabo or Yucatan areas, someone had grabbed my number. I called the bank, the account was closed and credited, and a replacement card was arranged to be mailed to my new (changed since last fall) BC address.
February 20: an email came from fellow traveler C telling me that the 3 cards she had used in the Cabo area were hit with fraudulent charges. I checked another active card that I had with me in Mexico but had never used there, and it had been hit with the same vendor as my other one, so that was reported, closed, etc. While on the phone about this second card, I learned that other small charges had been made in the Florida area for car rentals.
March 3 2008: there had been no replacement card from the first bank by this date, so I called to find out the status. And here it got ugly: a replacement card had recently been used to attempt this account, and was being used again, even as I was on the phone with the bank fraud specialist! I can’t recall for sure now, but the card was either being attempted in Miami, FL, or in Bogota, Columbia, or both. But a woman had been on the phone with the bank for days repeatedly, speaking through a Spanish translator. As she did not have my US Social Security #, she was not successful in making charges. However, the account was successfully entered to the point where the address was changed to an address in Miami. At my repeated insistence that I knew NOTHING about a Florida address, the fraud specialist bumped my case up to the level of identity theft. The ID theft specialist then could/would not ascertain that I am the rightful owner of this account until I proved it in the presence of a bank manager, with the bank manager on the phone with the ID theft agencies. This had to be arranged for the following day. In the meantime, I discovered that all 3 of traveler C’s fraudulent charges were made under the same name as the major ones on my cards…so 5 charges by a “vendor” of the same name.
March 4, 2008: at the Credit Union bank, I presented the manager with the entire required ID, where she verified both her and my legitimacy with the ID theft agency by phone. At that time, US credit reporting agencies were informed not only about the fraud charges on the two accounts, but of the ID theft as well, and thus all access to my credit reporting, and all access to my credit was put under scrutiny. I was then given the option to go a step further and have an interview and credit report viewing by phone, with Identity Theft Assistance Corporation (ITAC), an agency that follows up on ID theft, and encourages the victims to offer their information and experience to law enforcement. Over the course of 3 phone conversations, this was finally completed last week.
March 3 – 24: I have now changed login names and passwords for ALL my bank and credit accounts will NEVER use unsecure wireless or internet café for any financial transaction, and as soon as my Canadian credit reporting reaches an adequate level, I will begin closing the US accounts (that’s a whole other story!)
But there are still some mysteries…
1. How did my 2nd card get hit in Mexico when I hadn’t even taken it out of my wallet? Did I go on line to check various account statuses? Yes, I usually do when I’m traveling for a long enough time that I need to make payments. Did I do so from my laptop on secure wireless? Yes. How about unsecure wireless? Very likely. How about a public computer? Also very likely…but if so, I know exactly which computer that would have been, and it is where the unsecure wireless is as well…a hotel that C and I were able to use on the beach, across from our hotel in San Jose del Cabo. Before that turns into an accusation, I may have used unsecured wireless in other locations (San Jose del Cabo, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Morelos, various airports) as I was still conducting an on-line college course (finishing one, starting the next one) in this entire 6 week period, but I cannot be sure if or where, I accessed any bank or credit account using unsecure wireless.
2. If the on-line checking I did there was the source of ingress into that 2nd account, could it also have been for my first one? Certainly, for the same reasons. How about C’s accounts? No, because while she used the cards while shopping, she was only away for 2 weeks and did not check balances or make on-line payments. And yet the same “vendor” showed up on all 5 of our accounts with about the same charge, $1200: ESTILO Y DEC EUGIN MELCHOR OCAMPO.
3. How did my first account’s replacement card get into someone else’s hands, whether Miami or Bogota? I asked my landlords here about the security of our (locked) mailbox. Short of theft by a mail delivery person, it’s secure. Could it have been stolen from the point of origin? Possibly, but that implies an “inside job” or mail theft from the bank, which could happen, but would be another level of reporting that I feel has to be left up to the bank to pursue. Lately we discovered that my new Canadian address, when taken down as the address to which the bank should send the replacement card, was done in error, and so it now seems likely that the card (along with subsequent letters from the bank looking for the fraud-affidavit of legitimacy) went wherever it went…and into the hands of a fraudulent user.
I didn’t make things easy for the banks or the credit reporting companies by the fact that I had moved from the US to Canada last year, that I had changed my BC address once, and that I had had to use C’s Seattle address in order to process the reporting because the agencies could not do so for non-US addresses. So between 2 Seattle addresses, and 2 BC addresses, I am still updating banks and credit reporting agencies.
This has all taken upwards of 10 hours of phone time, over the course of many days, and in total, a period of 2.5 months, but I believe now that the situation is at least stable. I have delivered this report to the Salmon Arm, BC RCMP, will do the same when next in the US.
So life goes on, but watch your backs folks!
Monday, March 24, 2008
New Life for Love
March 24, 2008
Still chilly (but sunny) here in the BC hinterlands, but in 2 weeks I'll be in Puerto Morelos, Mexico (1/2 hour south of Cancun) to be the labour coach for my youngest daughter's first baby’s birth! Yow, how did THAT happen??? Well, it does, doesn't it?
Hmm, having a kind of visionary sense here that is raising the hair on my arms...bebes are born all the time, everywhere, but when it's your OWN, meaning within your own circle of family and friends, it is a supreme event...new life coming to walk on this "blighted beauty of a world" to quote Meem. And so there are many people in our overlapping and intersecting circles…Maya, Mexican, Canadian (and farther back through reaches of time and family to Holland, France, Ireland, etc), American…who will be gently tugging on that slippery little head as it emerges out of the internal sea created by William, Crescent, and his own self into the air...as he echoes the entire flow of evolution, as he comes into his own karma...
Whew, giving myself major goosebumples here! Better get back to the course grading and then outside into some sun!
Best wishes and Happy Spring (!!!) to all
Linda
ps - go here: http://www.lindakhandro.com/oceanographyonline/oceanonline.html for some cool wave and beach movies and pictures, compiled for my Oceanography students.
Still chilly (but sunny) here in the BC hinterlands, but in 2 weeks I'll be in Puerto Morelos, Mexico (1/2 hour south of Cancun) to be the labour coach for my youngest daughter's first baby’s birth! Yow, how did THAT happen??? Well, it does, doesn't it?
Hmm, having a kind of visionary sense here that is raising the hair on my arms...bebes are born all the time, everywhere, but when it's your OWN, meaning within your own circle of family and friends, it is a supreme event...new life coming to walk on this "blighted beauty of a world" to quote Meem. And so there are many people in our overlapping and intersecting circles…Maya, Mexican, Canadian (and farther back through reaches of time and family to Holland, France, Ireland, etc), American…who will be gently tugging on that slippery little head as it emerges out of the internal sea created by William, Crescent, and his own self into the air...as he echoes the entire flow of evolution, as he comes into his own karma...
Whew, giving myself major goosebumples here! Better get back to the course grading and then outside into some sun!
Best wishes and Happy Spring (!!!) to all
Linda
ps - go here: http://www.lindakhandro.com/oceanographyonline/oceanonline.html for some cool wave and beach movies and pictures, compiled for my Oceanography students.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Home(s) Again!
January 18, 2008
…wait a sec, didn’t I title a post with” home again” just a few short months ago? Indeed I did! But since “home” is just as elusive a concept now as it was then, who’s counting! This time I’ve gone home to BC from my old home in Seattle from my daughter’s home in Puerto Morelos, Mexico. In other words, from 80 degrees to 50 degrees to 30 degrees! Yes, home to winter. Enjoy the photos!
…wait a sec, didn’t I title a post with” home again” just a few short months ago? Indeed I did! But since “home” is just as elusive a concept now as it was then, who’s counting! This time I’ve gone home to BC from my old home in Seattle from my daughter’s home in Puerto Morelos, Mexico. In other words, from 80 degrees to 50 degrees to 30 degrees! Yes, home to winter. Enjoy the photos!
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