Drilling: Day 2

Day 2 began with blowing out the drilled, 360-ish-foot hole to clear it of debris and allow the water to come up for better testing.

Maxwell (from Northwater) is with us for the drilling process to document soil types and test the water.

(These are soil/rock types pulled from different depths.)

While Maxwell was testing the chemical properties of the water, others were tasting the water itself.  The first bucket was salty, but the second was much better.  A second attempt had the same results: first bucket salty, second bucket sweet.

Later, after discussions, it was surmised that the first bucket was catching water from a shallower, salty aquifer and the second bucket was catching water from a deeper, sweeter aquifer (after the first had been expelled).

Matt (left) is the head of the Blue Ridge drilling team.  Rick (Lemuel’s water solutions coordinator) has been carefully following the progress, communicating with the water study technicians in the States, coordinating logistics and details, and taking part in the decision making.

The decision was made to drill just a little bit deeper, and we finally stopped somewhere between 370-380 feet.

Now that the first hole was drilled, we decided to stick with the original plan and enlarge the hole to take a 6″ casing. Until that casing is in, we won’t have a final idea of the quantity/quality of the water we have.  Stay tuned!

Tomorrow, we should be finished at Site 1 (TW-1a) and off to Site 2 (TW-2)!