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Utah Desalinization Plant Causes Earthquake
mknewman writes "A Utah desalinization plant which removes 260 gallons of salty brine from a river which feeds the Colorado river has caused a 3.9 on the Richter Scale earthquake, noticeable by people 60 miles away in Grand Junction. More information at http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/11/15/earthqu ake.wellpumpin.ap/index.html"
Well, in the interests of refecting what the article actually said, mknewman might have posted:, "A Utah desalinization plant which pumps 260 gallons per minute of salty brine to a depth of 14,000 feet underground, is probably associated with an earthquake measuring 3.9 on the Richter Scale, and noticeable by people 60 miles away in Grand Junction. More information at CNN.com
Three Squirrels
removing 261 gallons of brine would have caused!
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Hmm.. Something's doesn't seem right about this measurement. I wonder what it could be!
Reminds me of something I heard about a geothermal generator near Cloverdale, CA. They have at least one earthquake a week because the station pumps water down into the ground to create steam to power their turbines. Take a look at this earthquake map. It's a map of all earthquakes in the California/Nevada area for the past week. Check out the area around Cloverdale. There will ALWAYS be at least one quake per week in that area.
stuff
Boy, you sure don't ask for much, do you?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Just don't think it would make a good James Bond movie. "Ah yes Mister Bond I see you managed to find my secret water pump!".
On a more serious note, it is known that taking gas or oil from the earth causes the ground above to sink. In the netherlands this is happening up north although the effects are of course very small according to those in power (and living above sea level).
It also causes some small earth quakes. Nothing major. Last one had all the news channels trying to make a story out of some rooftiles that slid off. We don't get good disasters here anymore.
If this causes a lot of earthquakes because it lubricates the faults might it not be used to untension high risk areas? Put some lubricant in the ground wich causes a lot of small earth quakes to take energy away from the ground so there is not enough left for a big one?
I have no idea how lethal a 3.9 is but it must be a hell of a lot better for places like LA then a 8.
What do you mean this is potentially very dangerous. You are talking about a city that got nuclear reactors in an earthquake zone. They like danger over there.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
. . . but I didn't realize that Mormons also got all shook up over plain old salt.
Had Hemos done much looking into of this story, a more accurate and indeed interesting write-up would have been presented to the Slash readers.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The theory is that the water essentially lubricates the fault, making it easier for it to move. The pumping does nothing to create pressure. Instead, it reduces the amount of pressure that has to build up before an earthquake hits. This means we get a bunch of small quakes relatively frequently instead of a big bad one when we least expect it.
So perhaps they should start similar pumping actions in California to allow for more smaller quakes to reduce the pressure buildup?
Wired had an article the other day regarding the environmental impacts of another desalination plant, this one in Arizona.
Stupid UTAH is the armpit of the United States, with the crazy cults and the SCO...
:).
Er, that's also Novell's stomping grounds...
And there's more cults in CA than UT...
So, no offense, but kindly STFU...
(No, I'm not from UT and I'm not affiliated with any cults
Back in the late 1960s or early 1970s, there was some injection of water into wells in the Denver area (I forget if it was at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant or at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal nerve gas/pesticide site). It resulted in the same types of low level earthquakes. I recall one morning, while I was carrying my full bowl of cereal into the living room to watch the cartoons, a magnitude 4 (or thereabouts) earthquake struck. I had to stop to prevent my cereal bowl from spilling milk onto the floor. The water injection was stopped, but I don't recall if it was to prevent further earthquakes or some other reason.
What is the purpose of this desalinization plant? The article says "The process is intended to decrease the salt content of the Colorado River downstream..." but why would we want to do that? If the purpose was to remove it for human consumption, I would understand. But that doesn't seem to be the case if it is just removing the salt for the downstream river.
This whole thing reminds me of the Rhine River which was straightened so it flowed faster, causing massive erosion and removing the natural process of detoxifing the water. Eventually, the river had to be un-straightened to fix the problem.
Well, on the good side, one would think it's releasing pressure, thus less danger of big quakes later on. On the downside, more smaller quakes. I guess they could get used to'm. And some people say that humans can't have an impact on their environment in the crust of the earth sense. Hehe... Now we get to not only mess up the atmosphere and the biosphere, but the crust too.
Z
And for that matter, why not 'desalinizationification'?
Many east coast earthquakes are associated with mines and quarries. Under the right conditions these create holes where the excess energies can be "unloaded."
We better hurry up and give up some rights before the terrorists start pumping water underground and causing earthquakes.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Remember that the Richter scale used to measure earthquaques is logorithmic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_scale That means the 3.9 earhtquake has 10 times less energy than a 4.9 and 1000 times less energy than a 6.9.
I mean, you wouldn't want all that salt water eventually ending up in the ocean, now would you? Here's an idea: why not let all the people downstream pumping water out of the Colorado desalinate it?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Subsidizing the farmers and cities who are pulling H2O out of the river, raising the relative salt concentrations by using tax money to remove salt to try to reduce the relative salt level to "normal".
Another "tragedy of the commons" caused by a lack of private property rights.
Want to solve this whole problem? Salt-neutral use of the river. If you want it, take it and deal with the salt. If you put into it, treat it first so it's at least as clean as what you took out.
Don't get me wrong, this same physical problem might exist as Provo or Los Vegas tries to deal with excess salt in their water, but at least then it wouldn't be my taxes paying for it. Or yours. Only the people who choose to use it deserve to be responsible for the cost of it.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Unless you consider Mormonism a cult...
The salt in the Dolores River comes from natural underground salt formations. Ground water passes through a collapsed salt anticline and becomes brine. You can read the technical report at http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/wri/wri02-4275/ and see photos at http://www.geo.mtu.edu/~jeh/Photos/Captions/capday 4.html.
Natural salt water is not uncommon in this region. The Great Salt Lake formed long before the Industrial Age.
a Salt Shaker.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
...is that this is a cheap way of causing earth quakes. Why would you want to do that, you ask? Well, besides the obvious reason of being an evil villain in a Bond-movie, you could also do this to make small earthquakes to disperse the tension in the crust, thereby averting big buildups that evetually get released in big, disastrous earthquakes.
Of course this would need to be tested somewhere safe. Are there any major fault lines in the antarctic?
Or is the opposite true? I would think that in such a large volume, it could be part of the problem.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Not to flame or anything, but the post says salty brine, the definition of brine already implies that it's salty, just trying to spread knowledge. Brine or salty water would have been acceptable.
/.
On a separate note very interesting article, you do learn something new every day, or several things on
redvsblue.com
::BANG!::
Sarge: Did you just shoot yourself in the foot?
Simmons: Yeah I do that sometimes now..
Unless you consider Mormonism a cult... :)
Heh!
Actually, they are large enough and been around long enough that they are considered a "denomination".
Here's a good description of the different terms for religious groups.