Posted on 09/11/2013 7:16:03 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Drought-stricken Kenya is sitting on 250-trillion liters of groundwater
With the world as thoroughly mapped and monitored as it is, it's easy to forget the Earth still harbors its fair share of secrets. Case in point: yesterday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization announced that Kenya's drought-striken Turkana County sits, rather ironically, atop a staggeringly huge reserve of subterranean water.
Following an extensive groundwater mapping project that incorporated satellite observations, seismic information and remote sensing, five vast aquifers have been identified hiding beneath the country's arid northern region. Preliminary estimates put the aquifers' contents at roughly 250-trillion liters of water, and UNESCO reports two of the aquifers –The Litikipi Basin Aquifer and the smaller Lodwar Basin Aquifer – have just recently been confirmed by physical drilling efforts.
UNESCO reports that the Litikipi Basin Aquifer, on its own, has the potential to "increase Kenya's strategic water reserves." The four remaining aquifers, combined with shallower reserves currently being tapped, have the potential to redefine the country's entire relationship with water. Via Radar Technologies International (RTI), the firm tapped to assist the Kenyan government in its search for water:
Overall, the RTI study found that Turkana hosts a minimum reserve of 250 billion cubic meters of water, which is recharged mainly by the rainfalls of the Kenyan and Ugandan highlands at a rate of 3.4 billion cubic meters [3.45 trillon liters] per year. This new wealth of water could boost Kenya's share of available water by 17% and alone represents nearly double the amount of water that Kenyans consume today. This groundwater raises the prospect for improving the livelihoods of the Turkana people, most of whom live in poverty and have limited access to basic services and clean water.
The next step, according to UNESCO, is to quantify the aquifers' contents more definitively, and assess their water quality. For now, though, people sound optimistic that the aquifers could bring safe water to Kenya's 41-million-person population, 17 million of which lacking access to safe water and 28 million of which do not have adequate sanitation.
“The news about these water reserves comes at a time when reliable water supplies are highly needed," said Judi Wakhungu, Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources at a UNESCO meeting on water security, held yesterday. She continued, highlighting the importance of protecting the resource and preserving it for those who need it most:
This newly found wealth of water opens a door to a more prosperous future for the people of Turkana and the nation as a whole. We must now work to further explore these resources responsibly and safeguard them for future generations.
Yet they are too backwards to figure out how to get the H2O out and they will go to UNESCO to find out how. As a result, many will die of thirst.
Better ... get some American petroleum engineers our there to show them what the term FRACKING means. : )
Ground water does you no good if you cant get to it. And there is a whole lot of difference for water that is 20 feet down, 200 feet down or 2000 feet down. All require power, drilling, and pumps to access. Hard to do that when the main source of power is either human or cow power.
Energy is the key. Fuel provides the mobility to trucks to get to the site. Fuel provides the power to run the drilling equipment. Fuel provides the power to run pumps. Without fuel, it is all for naught.
And fuel means oil. Yes, that “evil” oil that the environmentalist want to do away with. Oil can save lives but the environmentalists don’t want to hear that.
We’d better send them a few hundred million dollars to buy bottled water since they are too stupid and/or lazy to pump it out of the ground.
Windmills.
I anxiously await Michelle Obamas announcement that she and barry are going to have Perrier Air Dropped to the region...for the duration.
Well its IS her husbands Homeland afteral.
“Yes, that “evil” oil that the environmentalist want to do away with. Oil can save lives but the environmentalists don’t want to hear that.”
It’s all easy. 200,000 gerbils on little wheels could solve the problem.
That wouldn’t surprise me. Tens of thousands of American small farmers and ranchers over the years have sunk water wells with their own money, but I suppose Barry and Mooch will have us paying for Kenya’s water wells. Then Kenya’s Uhruhu will fly to China and thank the commies for loaning us the money.
Im surprised that Barry AND Mooch didnt hold a Co-Press Conference TODAY....commemorating their Intentions to launch Water-Aid.
A NEW form of wag the dog to be sure...and something only an obama would dare try to pull off.
Water Aid 10...Benghazi 0
For Americans and other non-EU contaminated people, it’s approximately 62.5 trillion gallons of water. For pseudo-scientists who like to obscure everything, I’m sure that it could be converted into real tons or EU tons.
So can DDT and they banned that. But the people that are killed by resurgent malaria are almost all black. So the liberals see no downside.
It’s a water desert... kinda
how about a....water...pipeline? no pipelines being dangerous and all that the poor desert might end up FLOODED..with H2O and we cant have THAT!
“how about a....water...pipeline? no pipelines being dangerous and all that the poor desert might end up FLOODED..with H2O and we cant have THAT!”
The old saying that you can bring a horse to water........ comes to mind.
lets do the math
25o Trillion liters of perrier at the wholesale cost of a buck a liter?
....sure....lets help michelle get the PERRIER AID movement going.
one issue I see holding this up...barry’s hesitancy to show special Interest in KENYA!!!
Just as this story emerges, Moochelle announces a new plan to get American children to drink more water every day. Hmmmm.
Look for a deal between Obama and his paid off compatriot leading Kenya to sink some deep water wells, and the Kenyan government controls who gets the water. Come to think of it—this is a scheme that is of a size and scale that Obama could handle. He might do well with it. (sorry—couldn’t help that last line)
Just as this story emerges, Moochelle announces a new plan to get American children to drink more water every day. Hmmmm.
Look for a deal between Obama and his paid off compatriot leading Kenya to sink some deep water wells, and the Kenyan government controls who gets the water. Come to think of it—this is a scheme that is of a size and scale that Obama could handle. He might do well with it. (sorry—couldn’t help that last line)
Paging Matt Damon! Surely he has enough money to get this water out of the ground.
“Since the dawn of history the black man has owned the continent of Africa – rich beyond the dream of poet’s fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet and yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light.”
“His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud.”
“With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail.”
— Charles Darwin
Really? There seems to be a disagreement as to whether those words were offered by Darwin. Would you care to enlighten me as to your source? Asked by one with an inquisitive nature. ?
“”Education, sir, is the development of that which _is_. Since the dawn of history the negro has owned the continent of Africa—rich beyond the dream of poet’s fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet. Yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud. With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail! He lived as his fathers lived—stole his food, worked his wife, sold his children, ate his brother, content to drink, sing, dance, and sport as the ape!
“And this creature, half child, half animal, the sport of impulse, whim, and conceit, ‘pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw,’ a being who, left to his will, roams at night and sleeps in the day, whose speech knows no word of love, whose passions, once aroused, are as the fury of the tiger—they have set this thing to rule over the Southern people——””
Here: http://www.freefictionbooks.org/books/c/11773-the-clansman-by-thomas-dixon?start=133
I offer the link which led me to that find and you will see this notation 7/8 down the page just above “Quotes about Darwin”. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin and this entry: “Falsely attributed to Darwin, but actually from The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905) by Thomas Dixon, page 134.”
And predictably, there are no statements in the article of estimated drilling depth for getting the water.
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