Well Manager® as a Drought Management Tool!
By J Andrew Reid

Drought is an extended period during which rainfall amounts are less than normal. During a drought, pond, lake and reservoir water levels drop because there is not enough rain to keep them full. These are the affects you can see but declining aquifer water levels, though they cannot be seen, cause economic and emotional hardships every bit as devastating for the huge number of people who depend on the groundwater wells that they supply.

Figure 1 is a page from the US Drought Monitor which can be found on the internet at this address. http://drought.unl.edu/DM/MONITOR.html   This site provides current and historical information regarding rainfall down to the state level. The map at the right shows drought conditions in the United States, including Hawaii and Alaska. Similar sites cover drought in other areas of the world.

When this map was produced Texas was in a very serious drought that had gone on for three years with no sign of significant relief and California was not far behind.  The colored areas show the severity of drought and the letter codes show the affect; A stands for a drought that has agricultural impacts and H signifies that the drought is having hydrological impacts affecting aquifers that supply groundwater wells.

The water you use comes from a reservoir, groundwater wells or a combination of these so droughts are something that can impact you and every living thing, from grass to trees and protozoans to people, in an affected area. For more information on how our customers are handling the current California Drought go here; California Drought  ; And for information on how some of our customers are handling the Texas drought go here;  Texas Drought

A resevoir during normal times and during a severe drought

Many municipal piped systems get their water from reservoirs so you can see how a drought is affecting your water supply and know that you should be conserving but some systems rely on groundwater wells or a combination of wells and reservoirs so many people rely on the system operator to let them know when supplies are low.

If your water comes from a private well you cannot see the water level receding as a drought deepens.  In fact, when a person gets out of the shower any morning they are never sure whether there is still 100’ of water in the well or only 1 foot. They simply know that they did not run out!  This is why people with a well are shocked when they go for water one day and it is not there. To them it seems as though the well went dry over night because they have never had this problem before.

When it comes to wells that “go dry” the perception is quite different from the reality. In most cases the water level in the well (water table) or the rate at which water flows into it (well yield) has been changing a little at a time over a long period until the supply can no longer meet demand. Turning someone’s water off without warning can cause panic because people expect that they will always be able to get water easily. If one person’s well runs dry that is little more than an inconvenience because they can always travel to the store or elsewhere and find water to function until the problem is resolved.  If the problem is more widespread than that; a reservoir is empty or an aquifer were to dry up leaving a large population without water, then the problem would be much more serious. 

Once the nearby bottled water supply was exhausted people would have to find some neighboring town or area where there was still water.  If a large number of people were to suddenly show up wanting water from some other town’s already inadequate supply then problems would surely arise.

About this time you are thinking, “This could never happen here in the US”, but it does happen to human populations in some places on earth. For a description of the drought in Somalia see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4719296.stm  where the BBC reported in 2006 that people were living on the equivalent of 3 glasses of water per day in 100 degree heat and begging for water along side the road.

Do not think that in the United States we are immune to these problems. In Nebraska, for instance, aquifer levels have fallen 30-50 feet since people began harvesting groundwater there. This is not to say that we will soon be begging for water along the roadside but it does mean that, in many places, we are using groundwater and reservoir water faster than it is being replenished. This is not a situation which we can blissfully ignore.

Well Manager® Systems as a Means of Aquifer Management

Many people view aquifers and reservoirs as a sort of bank account where water is stored. In times of plenty the bank stays full and in times of drought we borrow from the account until things return to normal and nature refills the account. The length of time that this borrowing can go on is directly related to the supply - demand relationship. If normal demand requires most of the supply then even a mild drought will result in borrowing from storage for day to day functions.   If we are not careful with our resource management, we could discover we are slowly draining the account even in good times as is the case in Nebraska. One day the account will be empty and humans will experience a crash far more devastating than the financial collapse of 2008-2009.

The key to real aquifer management lies in individuals managing their withdrawals from it. If everyone is held to their share of the aquifer’s recharge capability then aquifer levels may fluctuate but they will not drop continually. A Well Manager® set at a collection rate equal to the individual’s well yield or less or to the property owner’s water rights or less would reduce water waste do to lack of control issues like running toilets and leaks and result in reasonably stable aquifer levels while at the same time reducing the spreading of contamination caused by over pumping of wells (see http://www.wellmanager.com/wellmanager-environment.htm )

There is no doubt that we must become more efficient in our water use and in many respects we have. In 1900 almost 10 gallons of water was required to flush a toilet but by 2000 we were using only 1.6 gallons to accomplish the same thing. In 1980 a washing machine required as much as 44 gallons per load and by 2000 there were washers functioning on 11-18 gallons per load. Unfortunately we have also found other ways to use water and the population has grown or shifted dramatically so, in many areas supply and demand are coming closer together and in others demand already exceeds the supply causing aquifers levels to slowly decline.

In the final analysis, it will be lack of water management that will do more damage than global warming. In fact it is lack of management that causes water disasters closer to home even today.

When drought strikes livestock raising areas of the world, the resulting financial disaster often wipes out farm enterprises that have relied on good fortune rather than good management practices to survive.  In businesses that depend on water availability for their survival, water is an asset every bit as important as money; the more you have, the easier it is to maintain and expand your business. 

In the livestock business water assets must be managed like cash flow. If you know how much water there is available at any given time you know how many animals you can sustain. If you allow a safety margin in your water budget you will have time to take action when a drought begins to affect water availability before the situation becomes critical.

The first casualty is usually grazing capacity. In a drought there is not going to be enough water to irrigate the grazing lands that rain has kept green. Since purchasing feed for grazing animals is rarely in the budget, financial decisions need to be made pretty early or the business may find itself in serious trouble.   If the animals are not dependant on grazing, decisions are tied more directly to water availability. 

Livestock farmers that see their water assets diminishing have time to sell off some of their animals while they are still healthy. This turns the animal asset into cash and reduces the demand on a diminishing water supply so that there is enough to keep the remaining animal population in good health. The alternative would be to simply keep pumping and watering animals until the well “suddenly” runs out one day creating a situation that must be solved immediately to prevent loss of the entire livestock investment. This sounds simple but livestock farmers do not know how much water is left in their well at the end of the day any more than a homeowner knows how much is left when they get out of the shower.  To make these decisions there needs to be a tool to gauge the effect of water use on overall availability before a sudden outage occurs. A Well Manager will not only get more water from a well but let the operator know how pumping is affecting aquifer water levels.

Well Manager® Systems for Managing Livestock Water Availability

A Well Manager® System is used to even out withdrawals from an aquifer by taking predetermined amounts at regular intervals. This keeps the well producing longer so it can provide more water in a day’s time. When this schedule is properly set up aquifer withdrawals cannot exceed the daily allotment because the system will not collect more than that amount.

When such a system is set up on a well that has a daily yield in excess of the owner’s water right or allotment, it serves as a guardian to even out and limit aquifer withdrawals. If the same system is set up on a well that is low yield or simply yields less than the owner’s water right, allotment or need, it can be used to maximize production and if set up on any well to take only a portion of the well’s daily yield it can be used to help make a water system more drought tolerant.

Let us examine the use of a Well Manager® to make a livestock operation more drought tolerant. While looking at this example we must keep in mind that a Well Manager® can collect more water from a 20 gpm well than a standard well pump operated by a pressure tank with pressure switch or one operated using a VFD controller to produce consistent pressure. For more on this see: http://www.wellmanager.com/wellmanager-howitworks.htm 

Suppose, for instance, the well for a ranch was 20 gpm when it was drilled. If the water system and Well Manager were set up to harvest 60% of that capability, then it could supply its intended use even if a drought took 40% of the well’s yield.

A Well Manager set to collect 60% of a 20 gpm well’s potential could harvest up to 17,280 gallons per day. That is enough water to raise a lot of cattle or anything else.  In a drought the well output would need to decrease by 40% before it would affect daily operations at all and if it declined beyond that the owner would know it was happening and have time to sell off some of the animals while they still looked good in order to cut the potential financial losses and reduce the water requirement to a level that would support his remaining stock.

This is a case in which a Well Manager® helped the business owner with the management of finances and of water resources while at the same time reducing stress on the aquifer. One more example of why Well Manager is the most environmentally responsible water harvesting system you can buy.