Huge water reserve found underneath Kenya
September 11, 2013 7:04 PM   Subscribe

Scientists have found an underground water reserve in Kenya. So large that it could meet the entire country's water needs for the next 70 years.
posted by pallen123 (50 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
I love this story pitch, but I'm highly cynical about it having a happy ending. Good luck to Kenya.
posted by rhizome at 7:07 PM on September 11, 2013 [13 favorites]


Here's hoping that Dannon and Nestle and Coca-cola and PepsiCo don't find a way to screw millions of people out of high-quality fresh water by bottling it for sale in First World countries.
posted by honeybee413 at 7:15 PM on September 11, 2013 [28 favorites]


It could meet the entire country's water needs for the next 70 years, but what's much more likely to happen is that it will meet a western corporation's profit needs for the next 10 years.
posted by TrialByMedia at 7:15 PM on September 11, 2013 [26 favorites]


Here's hoping that Dannon and Nestle and Coca-cola and PepsiCo don't find a way to screw millions of people out of high-quality fresh water by bottling it for sale in First World countries.

I would not get too worked up about this possibility. The article indicates the aquifer contains 200 billion cubic meters of water. That works out to 200 TRILLION one-liter bottles of water. That's enough for every person currently alive on earth to have one, one-liter bottle every day for the next 78 years. I do not suspect even the Axis powers of Dannon/Nestle/Coca-Cola have such designs. Let's try to be happy about good news.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 7:25 PM on September 11, 2013 [7 favorites]


Tomorrow: Georgia claims access to aquifer in border dispute with Kenya.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:26 PM on September 11, 2013 [8 favorites]


UNESCO aren't the IMF. In fact the IMF aren't like the old IMF, so governance issues aren't as bad as they used to be, rapacious international water corps are a threat but perhaps under more control than they once were.

One issue will be that the map shows that the aquifer is partly in South Sudan, the world's newest country, so equitable sharing arrangements will have to be developed. Also, not sure what the soils are like, I hope there's not vast amounts of salinity there in a decade or two.

Also the gizmodo article says that it will be *awesome* for the nomadic tribespeople to settle down like proper civilised people and start farming and living in towns. Not so sure that's
a) likely - since immigrant farmers are far more likely to take over their land than they are to start a whole new way of life, and
b) the best outcome in terms of health and happiness for these people.
posted by wilful at 7:28 PM on September 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


Coming soon to Kenya: subsidence.
posted by entropicamericana at 7:29 PM on September 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


pallen123: "So large that it could meet the entire country's water needs for the next 70 years."

Then what?
posted by notsnot at 7:33 PM on September 11, 2013 [11 favorites]


If Kenya's government is able to create the proper infrastructure for the water, the nomadic tribespeople of the region can settle down instead of searching for rain which could lead to farms sprouting up, towns growing and a whole country developing.
What could possibly go wrong?
posted by Ironmouth at 7:36 PM on September 11, 2013 [7 favorites]


Just for reference, this aquifer (allegedly) contains water equivalent to approximately 51% of Lake Ontario. This is a LOT of water.

And on preview, notsnot, aquifers naturally recharge from surface precipitation events. Although large parts of this aquifer are under a desert, I think that rational water use regulations could keep it afloat for a lot longer than 70 years, possibly indefinitely.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 7:37 PM on September 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


Sorry, I did some bad math above; this aquifer is about 12% of the volume of Lake Ontario. That is still a lot of water, but I regret my unsupported hyperbole, above.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 7:46 PM on September 11, 2013


Then what?

What do you mean? Like this essentially free water is a bad thing? The fact that it will eventaully run out means it shouldn't be used? 70 years is a long time in the future to worry about what might happen then.
posted by wilful at 7:49 PM on September 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


Needs the "optimism" tag.
posted by arcticseal at 7:54 PM on September 11, 2013


"Then what?"

Then they will have had 70 years to figure out what to do rather than no years.
posted by Ardiril at 7:54 PM on September 11, 2013 [10 favorites]


Is it possible that aquifers of like size are still waiting to be found elsewhere? Say, beneath dessicating agricultural states that might otherwise be tempted to dip a straw in the Great Lakes?
posted by Iridic at 7:59 PM on September 11, 2013


I'm sure they're happy to have all that water, but you know they'd rather have oil.

One hopes this discovery does not hinder efforts to preserve the so called "water tower," the complex of tropical montane rain forest and mountains that encourages the rainfall that subsequently waters (and hydro-powers) much of the country. Encroaching agriculture and logging have taken their toll.
posted by notyou at 8:00 PM on September 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


Well don't just sit there, let's get fracking!
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:08 PM on September 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


notyou, can you post a link to some more information about the "water tower" that you find reliable? I am not familiar with that particular concept as it relates to aquifer depletion and recharge in Kenya; but then, what do I know? I would be interested in whether anyone has cited an unintended negative consequence from tapping this newly-discovered aquifer, how it might fit into the "water tower" in Kenya, etc. This is an honest request, not an attempt at cross examination. Thanks.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 8:24 PM on September 11, 2013


This was an actual James Bond movie.
posted by maryr at 8:46 PM on September 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


Tomorrow: Georgia claims access to aquifer in border dispute with Kenya.

Part of this aquifer is under South Sudan, so a dispute is likely.
posted by Flashman at 8:46 PM on September 11, 2013


It so weird to live in a time when space satellites, invisible rays that see through solids and the hard work of scientists and engineers are combined to discover a solution to a drought stricken nation's water problems and the method is called simple.
posted by srboisvert at 8:50 PM on September 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


And on preview, notsnot, aquifers naturally recharge from surface precipitation events.

Not always. The Ogallala Aquifer doesn't; all that water is from another geological age and essentially no recharge goes on in any human timescale. Once it's gone it's gone.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:55 PM on September 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


the nomadic tribespeople of the region can settle down instead of searching for rain which could lead to farms sprouting up, towns growing and a whole country developing. This won't happen overnight, of course, but having a water supply that can last for more than half a century is definitely a jumpstart.

It is wonderful that Kenyans will have access to plentiful water.

To play devil's advocate, won't the nomadic tribespeople be better equipped to thrive in a Kenya 70 years from now than a society dependent on a fully depleted aquifer? It is not for the developed world to decide, any more than it is for Kenya to manage our water resources, but on that note... the Ogallala aquifer, one of the world's largest, which covers America's Great Plains, was depleted by 3% between 2001 and 2008. This draw is 32% of the cumulative depletion of the entire 20th century (that is to say, rapidly accelerating). It will be 70% depleted in 50 years. Fully depleted aquifer zones of the Ogallala will take 100,000 years to replenish. For comparison, 100,000 years ago, homo sapiens lacked symbolic culture, language, and specialized lithic technology.
posted by eddydamascene at 8:57 PM on September 11, 2013


If this aquifer is anything like the one under my city, Nestle will be setting up shop within days.
posted by rocket88 at 8:58 PM on September 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


Needs the "optimism" tag.

I don't think Metafilter supports an "optimism" tag.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:03 PM on September 11, 2013 [10 favorites]


you know they'd rather have oil

They do have oil.

Having all this fresh water is great for Kenya. So is having all the oil they have. Does that mean it's going to go well? I don't believe that for a second.

Kenya ranked 139th out of 174 countries rated on Transparency International's corruption index in 2012. Who here honestly believes that with their newly discovered wealth of water and oil, they are going to move up that spectrum?

You do realize that these nomadic tribes people are the same ones who go to war with each other with bows and arrows and frigging spears on a seasonal basis over access to grazing territory, right?

They have a government full of thieves and gangsters (literally), many of whom were complicit in the killing of innocent civilians 2 elections ago, and only one of whom is just now finally showing up at the Hague. The capital city's airport arrival's hall was burned to the ground a month or so ago and fire crews were unable to reach it while it burned due to the regular traffic congestion. People speculated that it was due to a row over duty free sales management.

They outsource their infrastructure development (read: all major road works, of which there are precious few) to China, in exchange for various resource futures rights, like many African nations. You can't get anything done in that country, from getting a driver's license to building a house, without a bribe. The police are so intertwined with the major criminal gang (the Mungiki, read up on them...good times), that they own the illegal form of public transport most of the public are forced to use, and so no laws are enforced for them or pretty much anyone else.

This country needs massive political restructuring from the top down before we can expect something like this to benefit the desperate mass of public that have for so long been completely failed by their rulers.
posted by allkindsoftime at 9:05 PM on September 11, 2013 [14 favorites]


Yup, pretty much what allkindsoftime says.

That's a pretty huge IF when they mention good infrastructure and governance....
posted by kaibutsu at 9:17 PM on September 11, 2013


This aquifer is safely geologically far away from the exploding lakes though, right?
posted by maryr at 9:38 PM on September 11, 2013


Then what?

These are ancient mine shafts of King Solomon that flooded when they accidentally pierced the source of the Nile which disappeared into a vortex, sealed and was forgotten, except for clues in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Great riches lay below, but breaking the seal of the ancient disappeared water unleash the curse of King Solomon. First it bring prosperity then war and famine stalk the all ye mighty who despair. They dig deeper seeking more and frack until earthquake tumbles the king of kings. "This too shall pass" -- King Solomon.
posted by stbalbach at 10:21 PM on September 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


Sure, JimInLoganSquare, but first I'll just point out that my comment was more about the difficult politics around conservation and less about the mechanics of aquifier replenishment. IOW, "Now that we have all this water, we'd be fools not to exploit the resources of the water towers!"

Fencing a Kenyan water tower will give you at least a little background of both the hydrologic processes, as well as the economics and politics.
posted by notyou at 10:30 PM on September 11, 2013


Have they tested the water for arsenic? That's apparently a big problem in african aquifers.
posted by empath at 10:48 PM on September 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


This aquifer is safely geologically far away from the exploding lakes though, right?

The two known limnic eruptions were lakes that are in Cameroon, the other side of the continent. Lake Kivu is a potential limnic risk, but it, too, is way on the other side of Lake Victoria from Kenya, some 400mi from the border, and perhaps 600mi or more from the aquifer. That said, I'm not sure that limnic contamination of surface water has much effect on an aquifer, as the whole process involves CO2 rising.

If this aquifer is anything like the one under my city, Nestle will be setting up shop within days.

I'm drinking Kenyaqua™. It's better for the environment, I think!
posted by dhartung at 11:35 PM on September 11, 2013


but what's much more likely to happen is that it will meet a western corporation's profit needs for the next 10 years.

I sure you didn't mean it this way, but you know I find sentiments like this, a little bit kinda subconsciously racist and typically Westernly inward-looking.

Thanks to allkindsoftime, I don't need to go into detail, but Kenyans are totally capable of completely fucking wrecking their own country, you know? And in fact the elite has been doing just that since literally day 1 of independence.

In fact, I would say that if you made a pie chart of modern Kenya's problems, the vast majority would be Kenyan-based and originated (this is not to dispute corrosive effect of decades of colonialism etc etc, but I mean, if you could wave a magic wand and make Kenya's problems disappear overnight, it wouldn't be mostly westerners and western companies disappearing).

Not everything in the world has to do with the west.
posted by smoke at 3:11 AM on September 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


The poverty I witnessed in Kenya and worse the enormous gap between the wealthy and the majority broke my heart. I decided never to be that tourist again. The poverty is not a result of a lack of water in the arid regions. This discovery will not even ensure that everyone gets drinking water food and shelter. That is the tragedy.
posted by BenPens at 4:23 AM on September 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


Yeah, sucking an aquifer dry can't have any consequences. We all remember that the center of the US used to be called the Great American Desert, right?
posted by clvrmnky at 5:28 AM on September 12, 2013


The article indicates the aquifer contains 200 billion cubic meters of water. That works out to 200 TRILLION one-liter bottles of water. That's enough for every person currently alive on earth to have one, one-liter bottle every day for the next 78 years. I do not suspect even the Axis powers of Dannon/Nestle/Coca-Cola have such designs.

I'm sure they want to get their hands on some of it, though. When ideally, it ought to be left to the Kenyans to decide what they want to do with it. Including, if they choose, setting up their own independent "Savannah Springs" bottled-water company.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:35 AM on September 12, 2013


The "what are they going to do in 70 years" talk seems a bit nonsensical. The article says the aquifer is enough water to be the sole source of water in Kenya for 70 years. But we all understand that they do currently have and will continue to have some other sources of water, right? And that it's not an either/or thing with the new source, right? That they can continue to use both?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:43 AM on September 12, 2013


This is like some kind of demented 21st century update to the old half glass of water saw.

The optimist says: "The drought-prone country has found an aquifer with 200 billion cubic liters of water!"

The pessimist says: "Megacorporations and warlords will probably steal it. Also, it may have arsenic."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:47 AM on September 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


And they're both right!
posted by Aizkolari at 7:33 AM on September 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


I think what people are getting at with the pessimism about it only being a 70-year supply is that yeah, it's great that water might be a non-issue for the next 70 years, but it's only a stop-gap. Aquifers are functionally non-renewable in a lot of cases, so finding one just kicks the can down the road. As others have pointed out, even if there were no political problems in play, discovery of such a large supply of easy water makes it likely that the area would begin to grow in ways that were completely unsustainable and would collapse once the water runs out. The pattern has happened in all sorts of places already.

Basically, as long as there's a shortage of water without a non-rechargable aquifer, there's a shortage of water period.
posted by Ickster at 7:43 AM on September 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


Again: introducing a water supply that has 70 years worth of water in it does not mean they will be out of water in 70 years.

X + 70 only equals 70 if X is zero. Their current water supply is insufficient but it is not zero.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:47 AM on September 12, 2013


Again: introducing a water supply that has 70 years worth of water in it does not mean they will be out of water in 70 years.

Yes, we know. Good thing history has no examples of people overutilizing sudden abundance and suddenly finding that what appeared to be a huge resource was actually a lot smaller than they thought. Just here in my little corner of the world (Minnesota), the forests were thought to be inexhaustible; 70 years to remove it all. The iron deposits were immense; about 70 years for all of the good stuff to be used up. We have an abundant supply of surface water in lots of the state, but in some areas, we've started to hit aquifiers so hard that the surface water is literally disappearing into the ground.

It's not that at current usage rates the water will only last for 70 years; it's that sudden abundance of a resource almost always leads to use at an unsustainable rate and eventually leaves things worse than they started out.
posted by Ickster at 8:20 AM on September 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


That's a fair point, but even so, putting a 70 year clock on it because hey, we just saw that number is absurd. My point was there are a lot more factors in how long a "70 year supply" lasts than people are taking into account. Certainly there are factors that could shorten how long that last just as there are factors that could extend it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:27 AM on September 12, 2013


Did they check for dorig?

I love anyone who gets that.
posted by gadge emeritus at 8:27 AM on September 12, 2013


It's not that at current usage rates the water will only last for 70 years;

Precisely; it isn't people filling glasses with water and drinking them that made all the above-ground water in southern Arizona disappear by the 1920s; it was agriculture that did it, of a kind was only made possible by pumping out groundwater. The unsustainability of this in turn led to fantastically expensive water engineering projects simply to allow the continuation of water use at that level.

Now I'm all for growing food, but not only does that make the 70 years figure meaningless but it introduces questions about the knock-on effects, like the economic and environmental effects of bringing in chemical fertilizers, more wildlife habitat loss, likely forced changes to traditional rural life, conflicts arising from the revaluation of lands, and so on.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:39 AM on September 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


Only on MetaFilter would a discovery like this be received as bad news.
posted by DWRoelands at 12:33 PM on September 12, 2013


Only on MetaFilter would a discovery like this be received as bad news.

Unfortunately, as TheMadThinker pointed out in yesterday's post, The Waste Lands, the human race has this uncanny ability to really fuck things up.
posted by BlueHorse at 1:05 PM on September 12, 2013


DWRoelands, I can't speak for everyone else, but I think generally we're not treating it as bad news but as an opportunity to examine simplistic takes given the socioeconomic realities as actually experienced. For example, the discovery of gold on your land is good news, right? Okay, now imagine that you're a Native American, "your" land is treaty land and the year is, say, 1868.
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:41 PM on September 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


I decided never to be that tourist again.

While I can understand the sentiment, if you don't decide to do something else to actively help with the same dollars you won't be spending on tourism, you are deciding to hurt more than you are deciding to help. Tourism is one of Kenya's largest sources of income, it plays a massive part of their relatively small economy. Deciding to not support the tourism industry there hurts the working class more than the ruling elite. You are effectively taking away jobs from the few who can get them, and thereby the financial support to the large extended families that rely on that one guy who can get a job carrying your bags from your safari vehicle to your tent. Responsible eco tourism is a huge boon to Kenyans, the last thing they need is you taking a moral stand that does nothing to help them, in fact the opposite.

I say this having spent the last 5 years living 100m from the main tourist route from Nairobi to Masai Mara - I've seen enough righ western tourists for 10 lifetimes.
posted by allkindsoftime at 5:56 PM on September 12, 2013


Like this essentially free water is a bad thing? The fact that it will eventaully run out means it shouldn't be used?

Used judiciously, this water is a Good Thing. However, we humans have a very bad track record at this sort of thing.

Used unsustainably, a lot of people will be better off in the short term, and then a lot more people will want in on this "free" resource, so that the lives and incomes of a huge number of people will become dependent on something that then dries up.

Sound familiar?
posted by HiroProtagonist at 7:21 PM on September 12, 2013


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