Sue Luft knows first-hand about the problems that occur when a community’s well demands for water far exceed the amount of available water. The Paso Robles, Calif. vineyard owner has faced water shortages due to acutely stressed wells in her area and it has seriously impacted her livelihood.
Chris Preston at Xylem has an official job title of Product Manager, but what he’s really good at is problem solving. As one of the speakers at this year’s National Ground Water Association Groundwater Expo in Nashville, he will be sharing his knowledge about troubleshooting submersible and jet pumps.
As I prepared for the National Ground Water Association’s 2013 Groundwater Expo in Nashville, I wanted to take a look at the state of the industry and offer a few thoughts on its near future.
Drillers know they make an impact, but that doesn’t usually mean helping to supply water for hundreds of thousands of people. Steven Bryan sensed the scope of the Central Utah Water Conservancy District project when he got the call. Working the project, which involves several 24-inch wells that will supply a swath of central Utah, only confirmed the impact.
In a perfect world, drilling fluids for each project would have exactly the right properties for the job at hand and the work would go as planned. But, sometimes, changing conditions downhole—e.g., shale, rock, sand or salt—require further modification in water loss properties, rheology control or viscosity modification.