Late this summer, when visiting my wife's mother outside of Greenville, Ohio, I noticed the "No CO2 Waste in Darke" signs along the road and was naturally intrigued. I had not been following the geologic carbon dioxide sequestration scene very closely. When I looked into it, I found that the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership had been working with The Andersons to develop a geologic sequestration test site, utilizing waste carbon dioxide from their ethanol plant near Greenville, Ohio. The project was being managed by my old (way back) employer, Battelle Memorial Institute, which has some expertise in geologic waste sequestration.

The idea was to pump CO2 into the Mt. Simon formation, an "aquifer" deep below, and generally isolated from, fresh water aquifers. The Mt. Simon already receives industrial wastes, injected under the supervision of EPA Underground Injection Control. Speaking as a geologic scientist, such a test would be intriguing.

It is with great sadness that we report the death of George Alford of Daytona Beach, FL (Obituary). George was an original and creative contributor to the art and science of diagnosing biofouling, cleaning it up, especially under difficult situations, and promoting maintenance to prevent or mitigate recurrence.

George was one of the original people in the field, and a genuine self-taught expert. In the late 1970s, he set out to learn all he could about this "iron bacteria" problem. He first contacted me in 1981, as I recall it, when I was on the staff of the National Water Well Association (now NGWA), after I wrote a couple of articles in the Water Well Journal as a newly minted staff expert on what we now call well biofouling. We have compared notes, collaborated, taught some courses, and generally stayed in touch about important stuff ever since. I thought he might beat this challenge too, but it was not to be. 

George was in on numerous inventions and contributions to the practice, including better mixtures for biofouling removal, perfecting the equipment to apply heated solutions in wells, and helping to promote maintenance as a practice to prevent out-of-control well clogging (still a new idea to many people). We are diminished by his passing. 

We thank his bride and family for sharing him with us. 

We also just now belatedly learned of the November 2008 death of Dr. Otto Helweg (obituary), a major contributor to the science and engineering of well hydraulics, as well as being a great Christian humanitarian and academician. He was 72. I only physically met him once and found him to be warm, gracious, and professional. Again, we are saddened and diminished here on this side by his passing.  

Here in Ohio (like other jurisdictions I suppose) we have state requirements for training contact hours. While I was prepping for a seminar I received an email happily announcing free 6-hr contact hour days and it struck a nerve. Yeah! Even more "free" training... So the process of devaluing training goes in this state. The default contact hour value goes to junk bond status. If the objective is accumulating 12 or so contact hours, why pay for it if you can string together a few booth talk trips here, an ORWA course there? ORWA - the same people bring you free hydrogeology performed by circuit riders. 

While the ground water industry cannot seem to win the discourse over terms, it can set some standards:

After decades of ANSI/AWWA Standard A 100 ruling the roost, the National Ground Water Association is in the process of publishing a standard for water well construction and development, ANSI/NGWA Standard 01. Watch the NGWA web site (see our links) for news of a date. 

A 100 is bass boat - NGWA 01 is a cabin cruiser. The standard is based on the 1998 version of the NGWA's Manual of Water Well Construction Standards that I had the privilege to edit. This in turn was an update of the 1975 Manual, which was set up to be a well construction standard, but never was formalized as such for some reason. Both the 1970s and the current efforts involve multiple topical committees of seasoned veterans from all over the USA. I had the privilege of working on the well development and well disinfection sections. NGWA 01 goes into significantly more detail than does A 100. It is specific yet flexible. 

When it is published this year, we urge you to use it and make sure your regulatory bodies have and use it. The work will improve the state of the art.

With a memo dated March 26, 2009, William M. Alley, Chief, U.S. Geological Survey Office of "Groundwater" declared a change in the USGS 35-year-old policy that ground water is two words (water with an adjective). We were alerted to this by an item posted on the LinkedIn Hydrogeology Group forum that linked to an item on Michael (Aquadoc) Campana's WaterWired blog. He also weighed in on the one-word or two debate back in 2008, with some good advice (don't sweat it, be consistent) and background.

This topic does seem to be something to just let go, not to waste words or passion about, but yet, it sticks in my craw as we say.  I have long preferred two words and we use Ground Water Science as our brand.

Dr. Alley states: "Language evolves, and it is clear that the one-word spelling of groundwater has become the preferred usage both nationally and internationally. The one-word spelling has been used by the Merriam-Webster online dictionary since 1998. Most water-resources publications also use the one-word spelling, as do many technical groups, such as the National Research Council. With the emphasis on interdisciplinary science, many USGS scientists who are not specialists in the field commonly use the one-word form, as increasingly do many hydrologists within the Water Resources Discipline.

"The term surface water has not seen the same language simplification that has occurred with the term “groundwater.” “Surface water” continues in the English language universally spelled as two words. Use of the two terms together spelled as “groundwater and surface water” has become common usage."

Let's break this logic down...

With the inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama, millions of happy Americans reaffirmed their intent to get together and to go out and make the world a better place. This impulse is as old as (and even precedes) the founding of the Republic itself, as observed by the 19^th Century French observer Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America, and continues to this day.