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Arapiles Bore Dry - see here for updates.


cruze

1-Oct-2008
8:48:12 AM

Perhaps everyone adopting the adage:

When it's brown flush it down. When it's yellow let it mellow.

Might help.

In that respect I was surprised to see that the male toilets were the first to close seeing as the urinal rarely (never?) got flushed. Then again I don't know the toileting behaviour of women...

Wendy

1-Oct-2008
11:46:46 AM

I thought it was ridiculous shutting the mens loos down - surely the women's just got used twice as much?

As for the adage - what's so hard about peeing on a tree or behind a bush anyway?


muki

2-Oct-2008
2:03:24 AM

Composting toilets will also "fail" if a person on antibiotics uses the loo, kills the bacteria doing the work.
Maybe a portable chemical loo would be good for those on antibiotics, and handle high season overflow.
when climbing in the Shawangunks I saw one used to service the climbers and walkers, did the job fine.

gfdonc

29-Oct-2008
11:36:43 AM

(bump) What's an update on the situation?
I heard today that:
- there is running water in the sinks
- the men's loos are open
- school groups are camping there
- the new bore will be online soon.

Any locals (or Tracey) able to confirm and/or provide an update?


Capt_mulch

29-Oct-2008
11:44:14 AM

I talked to a guy yesterday who was just back from Araps and said that they were drilling a new bore.

Access T CliffCare

29-Oct-2008
1:19:08 PM

Apologies - I thought I had already posted an update. Must of planned to but.....

Keith Lockwood contacted me and informed me that they had drilled a new bore and found water.

Access T CliffCare

29-Oct-2008
1:22:09 PM

I did post an update - I'm not going crazy. A few replys back.

Cheers,

gfdonc

29-Oct-2008
3:28:58 PM

On 30/09/2008 access T wrote:
>The contractors hired to drill a new bore have found water at the Mount,
>so it shouldn't be too long before the toilets are back on bore water again.

Sorry to bug you Tracey, but do we assume "shouldn't be too long" means that the new bore is operational now?

I know I sound pedantic but I expect there would be a bit of work involved after a hole was drilled before it was connected to a tap and working.

Wendy

29-Oct-2008
4:43:47 PM

From what I heard, the new bore lasted 1 day before it ran dry. So last week they had them out again drilling another. No idea how it went.

School groups have been camping out at the mount throughout the whole time, those I spoke to about it thought it was unreasonable of parks to pick on them to camp elsewhere and they liked to be able to do things at the mount after hours as well.

The composting loos were pumped out so they may be less disgusting now. The men's were still shut last week, didn't notice if that had changed yet.

Access T CliffCare

29-Oct-2008
6:31:56 PM

I'll give Peter Hawker a call tomorrow and see if I can find out what the specifics are. Even if the toilets are operating and there is water, people should still take all of their own. As Wendy has told us, the first bore they drilled went dry. Who's to say it won't keep happening. It really drives home the point that the campground needs to be able to run as a waterless one. Regardless of where the water comes from, a bore or trucked in, it is such a waste of a resource that we can't afford to waste.


Capt_mulch

29-Oct-2008
6:59:21 PM

>As Wendy has told us, the first
>bore they drilled went dry. Who's to say it won't keep happening. It
>really drives home the point that the campground needs to be able to run
>as a waterless one. Regardless of where the water comes from, a bore or
>trucked in, it is such a waste of a resource that we can't afford to waste.
To reiterate my previous point, bores don't "go dry". What happens is that the soil profile around the drawing point (where the water is drawn out from at the bottom of the bore hole) hardens up due to minerals in the soil clogging up the pores of the soil profile, preventing the flow of water from the surrounding soil profile. The best thing to do is drill another bore. You have to be working REALLY bloody hard to suck the soil profile dry (e.g. Western Queensland where they just run their bores 24/7 and run the water out into "bore drains"). If the Pines bore has been going 19 years (I think that's what someone said), then it has done really well for the service that it has given, and a new bore will probably give another 19 years of service. This is not to say that everyone using the water from the new bore should not treat the water like gold and the (your preferred) godsend that it is. Pi22 under a pine tree and feed your inner hippy...

Access T CliffCare

29-Oct-2008
7:50:28 PM

Sorry, bad choice of words. I do understand that bores don't go dry as such. Its just an immediate phrase,albeit a lazy one, that garners pretty immediate understanding of the situation. I suppose, other people like myself have used the phrase,(thats where I've picked it up from) it gets passed on and suddenly, bores 'go dry'. Better wording would be??


Capt_mulch

29-Oct-2008
7:55:07 PM

Better wording would be "bores become unproductive, or go 'hard'". They just fricken wear out in other words. I know some guys that used to make a living from reworking bores (dump a stick of dynamite down the hole).

Wendy

29-Oct-2008
8:05:51 PM

So can you tell us why the new bore stoped working almost immediately? Surely that's not enough time for it to "harden"?


Capt_mulch

29-Oct-2008
8:19:40 PM

What does "stopped working" mean? Did they put way too big a spear pump down and pump it faster than it would recharge? You have to work out the recharge rate on a bore, i.e. you pump it with the right sized pump so that it will give a sustainable flow (say, 10 litres a minute), and when the flow rate drops off, you stop pumping. You then pump again in say six hours and see if you get the ten litres a minute again, and for how long. Working out bore yield is no exact science - you have to sit there for weeks working with the pump rate, length of time you are pumping, and how long it takes to recharge the surrounding soil to give that pump rate. You are not working with an underground stream here, more like an underground sponge. Get a big sponge that is wet, and squeeze it. If you squeeze it hard (high pumping rate), the sponge runs dry fast. How long does the sponge take to get fully wet again (recharge rate)? - depends how much water is around it. You have to work out how fast you are squeezing the sponge (pumping), compared to how fast the sponge gets fully wet again.

I know this 'cause ten years ago I spent $10,000 putting down a 90 metre bore for a nursery, then spending the next 2 months with a stopwatch and a 10 litre bucket working out that the bore could only sustainably yield 1500 litres a day. To give 1500 sustainable litres a day I had to pump 3 times a day (every eight hours), yielding 500 litres each pumping cycle. Any more pumping than that, and I would get less water.


Capt_mulch

29-Oct-2008
8:30:03 PM

I am quite happy for someone to pay me to come down and camp out in the Pines for a few weeks and work out the yield on the bore. Hopefully, what I do in between the pumping/flow rate measurement times is my own business :-).

Access T CliffCare

30-Oct-2008
9:54:41 AM

Ok, just spoke to Peter. The situation is :

There is no water from the bore.
Water is being trucked in
No water from the taps
The mens flushing loos are closed to conserve a little more.
The flushing loos and the composting toilets are booked to be emptied
tomorrow.

So - Please take all your own water.

I will be catching up with Peter over the weekend to discuss the current state of play with the bore and water at the campground so hopefully I shall have a little more information shortly.

Cheers,
Tracey


IdratherbeclimbingM9

30-Oct-2008
10:03:09 AM

On 29/10/2008 Capt_mulch wrote:
>To reiterate my previous point, bores don't "go dry".

They do when the groundwater level is depleted to a level below the draw-off point (level), of the bore concerned.
If this situation has been created by unsustainable useage (widespread across that aquifer), then sufficient recharge to 'wet' the bore again is not likely to happen any time soon.

>What happens is that the soil profile around the drawing point (where the water is drawn out from at the bottom of the bore hole) hardens up due to minerals in
>the soil clogging up the pores of the soil profile, preventing the flow
>of water from the surrounding soil profile.

That is true in some areas depending on aquifer soil type etc., and less so in other areas.

>The best thing to do is drill another bore. You have to be working REALLY bloody hard to suck the soil profile dry (e.g. Western Queensland where they just run their bores 24/7 and run the water out into "bore drains").

Not if the bore only tapped into a local 'lense' type aquifer. These can be depleted relatively quickly and if not interconnected to a larger aquifer system may take 'forever' to recharge.


Capt_mulch

30-Oct-2008
2:53:49 PM

>If this situation has been created by unsustainable useage (widespread
>across that aquifer), then sufficient recharge to 'wet' the bore again
>is not likely to happen any time soon.
>
Is there lots of people pumping out of the local aquifer? Maybe the golf course on the other side of Araps, but I don't see evidence of widespread abuse in the general area of the Pines. If there is an aquifer there it should be pretty stable, especially if the other bore was able to go for as long as it did. There is a big recharge area on that eastern side of Araps.

>Not if the bore only tapped into a local 'lense' type aquifer. These can
>be depleted relatively quickly and if not interconnected to a larger aquifer system may take 'forever' to recharge.
>
You'd think that if it was a lense type then the old bore would have suffered from the same problem years ago. Being so big, flat, and historically an old sea bed (deep, unchanging profile - to the east of The Pines at least) you'd think that it would be more of a sponge type, with run off hitting the quartzite and granite (underneath) that is under the eastern side of Araps and moving towards the recharge zone.


IdratherbeclimbingM9

30-Oct-2008
3:26:03 PM

On 30/10/2008 Capt_mulch wrote:
>Is there lots of people pumping out of the local aquifer?

I don't know.

>If there is an aquifer there it should be pretty stable, especially if the other bore was able to go for as long as it did.

Recharge rates are dynamic and independent of usage rates. Both factors influence (amongst many other factors), longetivity of bore life.

>There is a big recharge area on that eastern side of Araps.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Recharge zones can be quite distant, and likely to bear no relation to local topography, particularly for deep aquifers.

>You'd think that if it was a lense type then the old bore would have suffered
>from the same problem years ago. Being so big, flat, and historically an
>old sea bed (deep, unchanging profile - to the east of The Pines at least)
>you'd think that it would be more of a sponge type, with run off hitting
>the quartzite and granite (underneath) that is under the eastern side of
>Araps and moving towards the recharge zone.

I suspect the geology of the area is rather more complicated than you seem to suggest here.
If you are right (and we are both thinking the same thing regarding where east is!), have you considered the possibility that the bore may be drilled on the 'edge' of the 'saucer' that is the relevant aquifer?

Possibly your logic is inconsistent (as I read it), re
>There is a big recharge area on that eastern side of Araps.
vs.
>run off hitting the quartzite and granite (underneath) that is under the eastern side of Araps and moving towards the recharge zone
?

Without sufficient data I am not prepared to speculate, as hydrogeology can be a very imprecise art!

These possibilities exist for sure.
If the new bore failed to continue to deliver water, then it either needs to go deeper if PV is prepared to gamble taxpayer $; ... or there may simply be insufficient water to be found there, irrespective of bore depth.

~> and if they do tap into a deeper aquifer, then the quality of any water found may be quite different to what people have become used to along the way.

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