Posted on 07/21/2012 12:25:47 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A newly discovered water source could supply half of Africa's driest sub-Saharan country with 400 years of water, reports Matt McGrath of BBC.
The new aquifer – called Ohangwena II – flows under the border between Angola and Namibia, covering an area of about 43 miles by 25 miles on Namibia's side.
The water is up to 10,000 years old and cleaner to drink than many modern sources.
Project manager Martin Quinger told BBC that the stored water could last 400 years based on current rates of consumption.
Currently the 800,000 people living in the northern part of the country get their drinking water from a 40-year-old canal that brings the scarce resource from Angola.
Quinger added that Ohangwena II could change the nature of farming in the area, which has only been viable near two rivers in the region, and could act as a natural buffer for up to 15 years of drought.
Natural pressure will make the water easy and cheap to extract.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
400 years supply in Africa but two and a half weeks if it were in NY.
There is irrefutable evidence that proves the Sahara was once covered by the Ocean.
In fact, there is an area called "Valley of the Whale" because of all the whale bones and other ocean specie fossils that have been found there.
I’m sure they’ll still need thousands of young naive Americans to go over there to dig wells for them and teach them to farm and not poo into the wells.
They should bottle it, advertise premium drinking water and sell it worldwide at an exorbitant rate. They could create jobs for their population and use part of the profits to build a desalination plant to produce water for in country use.
That’s true of much of the world, isn’t it? I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but here in NC, surface water drives groundwater out. Counterintuitive I know, but having been involved with putting a well in at a lake house, I can say that it’s a definite challenge and the well was unusually deep.
” Now in Africa, you have a group of people that the entire moralizer circuit considers disadvantaged: the underdogs. “
Hmmmm... Remember the DDT ban, and the thousands (tens? hundreds of thousands?) of deaths from Malaria in sub-saharan Africa??
I remember reading years ago of a gigantic aquifer beneath the Sahara.
Impossible not to wonder if this is why we’ve been sending some Marines to Africa, ostensibly as “advisors” to do “training.”
Even the mountains that form the Vegas Valley (here) have aquatic fossils, on top of them!
I was just expanding on your original point.
They won’t be able to drill any wells, as this would disturb the habitat of the tri-anus desert wombat.
signed, all tehe greenies
Tectonic plate action. It was how all mountain ranges were formed.
“the stored water could last 400 years based on current rates of consumption”
well. like that - “current rates of consumption”, is going to happen now that everyone knows it is there - NOT
settled areas WILL grow in population in the area and whole new settlements will likely be started as well; on this news, population and water consumption in the area WILL grow, for sure
We have all the water we need, all we have to do is build desalinization plants in the Gulf of mexico, off the coast of CA and off the East coast. There is no need to steal water from Africa.
There will be a war over the water find. What will China do to try and cash in on this find and the war? What kind of scheme will China cook up to profit from this and as usual with everything the Chinese do, leave the natives stripped to the bone?
Indeed, I was just making the point that they were under water at some point in time.
What a good break, now they can triple their population in 20 years.
Okay.
“Now if they could only figure out well drilling.”
I have friends in Uganda who routinely drill water wells over 100 feet deep using hand tools.
Can you?
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