Brock Yordy: 

Good morning. Welcome to episode 140 of the Driller Newscast, a weekly update on the news, stories and policies impacting the drilling and construction industry. I'm your host, Brock Yordy, and this week in the news we're heading to Oregon, to the University of Oregon, where with their partners, they have defined a massive aquifer beneath the cascades in the volcanic rock. Next, we're going to discuss the United States Geological Survey's report that ranges from 2010 to 2020 just recently published on our water consumption. For our feature this week as promised, we're going to head back to the Strategic Groundwater Security Report by PCAST and we're going to go line by line, drive right in and drill into their recommendations and solutions. But before we get into all this great content, let's see where safety fits in this week. This week in safety, OSHA last week began enforcing their new personal protective equipment fitting regulation, which started on January 13th, 2025. 

This initially started in 2023 with discussions and submissions on where we should go with this rule. No different than what we're doing with the new OSHA heat rule and these new regulations that are now being enforced require employers to provide PPE that fits each worker properly. Employers must ensure that all personal protective equipment is 1) safe and designed for the construction work to be performed, and 2) is selected to ensure that it properly fits each affected employee. PPE must fit properly to provide adequate protection to protect employees. Seems pretty simple, doesn't it? Industry. If the PPE does not fit properly, it can make the difference between an employee being safely protected. Having the right tools and proper PPE in place is imperative for us. Inadequate protection causes inefficiencies, hazards and that chance for a catastrophic event. In some cases, ill-fitting PPE may not protect an employee at all and in other cases presents additional hazards. I want you to consider this as we look into this new rule. 

There's a million women who work in the construction industry. If you remember, we're at about 8.25 million Americans every day that work in construction. Out of the 160 million Americans that work every day want you to consider as we walk into our hardware stores and different places to buy PPE, it's cold right now. It's excessively cold across the country, and what do we have? We have gloves that are under the heating vents in the truck. We have gloves that we're trying to utilize, multiple sets of gloves, and now we get into our employees that maybe have smaller hands or bigger hands or don't fit properly. This is the same for safety vests or the right eyeglass protection. Say somebody has prescription glasses, do we have the right goggles to fit over or have we given them the proper things? These are all the pieces that now, in construction, are required. 

It's imperative that as we are strong drilling professionals, that we give our employees the right PPE, the right tools and the right equipment to operate safely so that we don't expose them to hazards. And as we have equipment that rotates and reciprocates and crushes and we have suspended loads, being able to move effectively, being able to handle tooling effectively is very important. I can say from right here, complacency with a cat head tightening four-inch drill pipe. I got my glove hung up. It was cold. I just still, we'd been doing it long enough that I wasn't taking it as seriously as the danger and I damaged my left pinky. I know we've all done it now. I want you to start thinking about near-miss reporting and how this affects our employees. 

It's time for us to consider all size employees from our big employees to our small employees, to our tall employees, individuals with bigger feet. There are so many ways that we have to make sure that we have the proper-fitting PPE to stay safe, go out, be safe, stay warm. Consider all the hazards to this winter weather that we're having right now across the 48 states. 

This week in the news, we're headed to the Cascade Mountain Range in Oregon, where a team of scientists from the University of Oregon, along with professionals from the Forestry Service USGS Drilling Professionals, hydrogeologists across the country have redefined a volume of water beneath the Cascade Mountains in the volcanic rock. The team that published the paper, lathe Carlston, Nathaniel Clem Gordon e Grant, Carol Fine, Pamela Sullivan, Sarah Cooley, Alex Simpson, Becky Fast, Catherine Cashman, Ken Friedrich, Lindsey Ball, and Daniel McKay. This is such a fascinating published paper, and we got to go out. 

Newsweek has already covered it. We're seeing it all over the place. It is stated the aquifer stored beneath volcanic rocks within the Cascade Mountains holds an estimated 21 trillion gallons of water according to the recently published paper in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that's where you go PN a.org. The title is State Shifts in the Deep Critical Zone Drive Landscape Evolution in Volcanic Terrains. I want you to put this into perspective. We talk a lot about an acre foot of water. This is 3070 3.8-acre feet are 1 trillion gallons, so this discovery right now is 64549.8-acre feet. The paper starts with this significance piece, and it says significance as stated in the research understanding near surface environment where atmospheric and solid earth processes interact often turned the critical zone is important for assessing resources and building resilient societies. Here we examine a volcanic landscape in the Oregon Cascade Range, an understudy critical zone setting that is host to major regional water resources, persuasive, ate, weathering and significant geohazard. 

They drilled over a hundred geothermal revealing influences of water and core temperature within what they discuss as a rain curtain. Again, you got to read this. We need to get together and geek out about it. Go to Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, that is ps.org and search the January 13th published paper again that is state's shift in the deep critical zone drive landscape evolution in volcanic drains. Last week after this was published, Newsweek covered it on January 14th titled Hidden Continental Sized Lake Discovered by University of Oregon. This was written by Jess Thompson, who is one of the great science reporters for Newsweek. I implore you to go and she got a quote from co-author l Carlston, which was stating it is a continental sized lake stored in the rock at the top of the mountains, like a big water tower. She goes on to get a quote from one of the geologists for the forest service and co-author Gordon Grant stating We initially set out to better understand how the cascade landscape has evolved over time and how water moves through it. 

But in conducting this basic research, we discovered important things that people care about, the incredible volume of water and the active storage in the cascades, and also how the movement of the water and the hazards posed by volcanoes are linked together. Go to newsweek.com and seek out the huge aquifer discovered in Cascade Mountains water storage. This is such a fascinating story, especially when we look at what we just got last week from Dr. Reed Maxwell with Princeton and the University of Arizona on unraveling the connection between surface water and groundwater. We're talking about fossilized water. We're talking about a discovery of 21 trillion gallons and what does that mean to us? I think it's insanely important for us to understand our strategic groundwater reserves, which is where we're heading for our feature. But before we do that, let's jump into this USGS report on January 15th of this year, the USGS published its water use and availability report taking into account from 2010 to 2020. 

Next week on the newscast episode 141, we will deep dive into the changes, challenges and impacts over the past 25 years and water consumption and look at the data that's been there over the past 25 years thinking about where we believed we were headed and where we are today. But for today, let's take a look at the USG S'S key findings from this report. It states an estimated average of 223,594,000 gallons are withdrawn from fresh water every day in the US and that's for human use crops, industrial thermal, electric power, and this is the average for 10 years. If we take into account wastewater and saline water withdrawals that jumps to 244,817,000 gallons a day for fresh water, 223,594,000 gallons a day is 686-acre feet. We just talked about redefining those 21 trillion gallons, that 65,000-acre feet of water in the cascades, and this report is telling us that we could consume that if that was the only thing we pulled from in less than a hundred days. 

Let's do the math everybody.  When we hear Arizona, California, Nevada to reduce 4-million-acre feet, we look at that. There is 15-million-acre feet of water in the Colorado River Compact. One acre foot is 325,851 gallons. Put that into perspective as we look at Lake Mead and Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe being the reservoir used as the largest freshwater lake reservoir. It is 122 million acre feet. The Great Lakes is 9,000,000,800,000 acre feet, so think about that, 65,000 that we just redefined. This is a big deal and as we look at water use and consumption and we look at the Ogallala and we look at the Colorado Compact and we look at the Trinity or the Edwards or what just happened with the wildfires in California, we are consuming excessive amounts of water and that's what it takes to be able to feed our country in the world, continue in industry, continue energy production, data centers, significant amount of water and we poke at golf courses and recreation and football fields. 

It's a drop in the bucket. It's less than 10% when we look at all the rest that's happening right now. So, 2025 as we move into this new administration and all that needs to be done with the EPA, the Department of Energy, department of Interior Bureau of Reclamation, and we're talking about water reduction. This isn't a drill baby drill situation. This is the best clean water in the world and the best clean air in the world, and that's what I've been promised for the next four years. It's a big deal everybody. This week's feature as promised, we're going to drill deep into the PA findings and recommendations. 

It’s a big piece here. Everybody and I understand we are onto a new LFA, and we have plenty of things happening in 2025 in the years to come, but this strategic groundwater study, this groundwater security study as we've seen what's the findings in the news by our academics been that carry very much about how groundwater and surface water and rain and snow impact our livelihoods. Let's get into this. This will probably be the last time we talk about anything to do with President Biden and the PCAST or these policies as we move into President Trump. 

Let's hope that the IRA stays strong and we're able to continue geothermal. Let's jump into this. These findings start for everybody out there, I need you to listen to this statement. The PA acknowledges and respects the state's authority for groundwater governance. This PA report focuses on the science and technology aspects of groundwater security and sustainability and does not make recommendations regarding regulations. Our purpose here is to facilitate and empower adaptive management of the nation's water systems so that water users and managers have the critical information for their planning, such as assessing manager, aquifer recharge and other mitigation efforts. Safeguard the future of groundwater supply and quality, incentivize sustainable management of groundwater. 

This first finding is huge. Finding number one, titled Whole of Country Unified and Comprehensive Picture of the Nation's Groundwater Storage Withdrawal and Recharge. Again, from University of Oregon to Princeton and University of Arizona to all the discussions we have at the national level with our national association. This is a big piece everybody, and they start by stating one of the fundamental challenges in groundwater management is that it is a hidden resource. We do not have a clear picture on how much groundwater there is. Two, how fast it is being depleted and three, if or how quickly groundwater is being replenished. What have we just learned? We learned we're using 200 plus million gallons a day of freshwater. We understand from the stories we've had that it's 10 years to a hundred thousand years to replenish that fossilized groundwater. We're just finding 21 trillion gallons of water in the cascade and defining it. 

Of course, we need clear maps. This is why we talk about the Grace satellite system. This is why we talk about the importance of groundwater protection and being groundwater professionals. Their recommendation, number one, after that statement, is to accelerate the development of a comprehensive repository for data and toolkits for groundwater, storage, withdrawal and recharge. A spatial and temporal scales useful for water managers and users. PAS recommends that an inter-agency working group on groundwater security and sustainability be established to guide, coordinate and provide oversight of the data software and toolkits needed to do water accounting and prediction by local management and to mitigate the risk of water depletion. But when you look at the Ogallala, you can go back and you can start looking at reports in 2007 and 2010, it states that the Ogallala has a vast reserve that can never be depleted and where are we today? 

Recommendation 1.2 to this same title, develop tools to enhance the nation's capacity to manage groundwater sustainability, to support water management planning decisions and to mitigate risk of groundwater depletion in Texas versus New Mexico. New Mexico put water wells as stated too close to the Rio Grande that then affected citrus farmers in the Texas Valley. That was a Supreme Court case we had last year. We need to have the right information to understand booze water is allocated where PAS recommends that the interagency working group on groundwater security and sustainability establish a national framework to coordinate hydraulic modeling with consistent approaches to incorporate surface water and groundwater. We're their surface water and groundwater are interconnected and though we had sockets versus the EPA and we're trying to talk about this divisible nexus, and we've had good groundwater professionals say rock, they're not connected. They're connected, and we're seeing the data more and more moving forward with the recommendation. The national framework should expand the scope of the presidential memorandum of October 10th, 2018. That is the waters in the west memorandum to include the entire nation and to explicitly include groundwater. There is a great need for additional research and development of the next generation of models in different modeling applications. For example, models should incorporate high resolution observations from hydro geo desi and their development and testing and research to better understand the physical systems such as shallow crustal water environments. 

This study goes on to talk about safeguarding the groundwater supply and quality over the next few decades and for the demand for groundwater and safe drinking water to be expected and to significantly increase over the decades because of our unpredictable weather from California and the Western United States havoc 23 and 24, those years we had atmospheric rivers and this year we have wildfires and droughts. We have to understand how our water cycle is working, and we are seeing studies now that are saying that a large majority of this water is staying up in our atmosphere due to greenhouse gases. We talk about snow melt studies and we talk about how important that is for the Colorado River and the other groundwater compacts out there, but how do we understand what we are withdrawing and how we are impacting that and that comes into understanding water quality impacts that are deteriorating our surface and groundwater with accumulated nitrates from fertilizers, PFAS, phosphates, wastewater, Gen X chemicals. 

This is all a big deal, everybody, and we need to understand that as we impact this water quality, as we've seen with biosolids and PFOS affecting farms and us having crops that are contaminated or getting into a situation where if our groundwater is contaminated, how do we feed our country? This is a big piece and that's why we continue to recommend that we look at safeguarding our groundwater quality. They end this report and there's so much in here that from conservation to recharge to how we are looking at working with this as finding new ways for water sustainability and how do we get to zero discharge? How do we recycle and reuse water? I know many wastewater plant professionals that go, Brock, I don't filter and release wastewater. I release clean water. These are all big pieces and how are we going to get there? 

We're going to get there by working with our states and the USGS, the USDA, the Department of Interior, department of Energy, and we have to understand their final recommendation is to look to our future and understand that we have a massive age gap and recruitment issue and their final recommendation as you go through all six of these and we've hit on the big parts for all of them, is this is the one that so important to me in this industry and the same as we see with the Department of Energy and geothermal drilling professionals, and it is recommendation six, launch a comprehensive campaign to recruit, develop, and retain a skilled workforce in groundwater science management and stakeholder engagement, drillers groundwater professionals. We all of these individuals address the challenges of groundwater sustainability and security and require that we all work together. We are better together as Dave Schulenberg would say, and this is a huge piece because we're going to need more and more groundwater scientists and we're going to need more and more drilling professionals that understand the science of drilling and science of the subsurface. We can no longer post silly things on Facebook that go, why can't we just have a national standard? At the same time when we say our state is our state for a reason, big government, get out. We need to be developing professionals. We do not need to be championing poor well digger practices. We need to be looking to get a workforce that is comfortable with the latest advancements in groundwater measurements and techniques and engineering advances for withdrawal recharge. 

PAS is asking for an inter-agency working group on groundwater security and sustainability to engage stakeholders, educate the public about the value of groundwater and the impact on our food, our infrastructure and civilization. This was a great report, and I know there were plenty of pieces where they're going, whoa, why are they talking about our state's groundwater when it's different pieces across the country and we are our own watershed, we're interconnected, and all the studies are coming out more and more. What are you going to do? Groundwater professional? I was little Bo Yordy working on cable tool rigs and mud rotary rigs in southwest Michigan. Very happy, worried about the Nebraska grout study or worried about what was the next tool that was going to be taken away from me because the state or the regulators didn't understand and then the housing market slowed down and I focused outside of business classes at night in a community college and I went to college full time and I went to Western Michigan University and I collaborated with professionals and I studied groundwater and I studied geology and I studied a lot more things and then I went off, worked for Bay Aid and multiple rig manufacturers and I'll tell you what, we're all in this together and it's not just Michigan's groundwater versus California's groundwater. 

We have to understand our impact and work together and communicate and be the groundwater professionals and drilling professionals that we promise civilization we can be. Go out and do it. Get educated. Thank you for joining us for episode 140 of The Driller Newscast. It is cold out there. We just had an inauguration. My Lions lost. So many things have happened in this first three weeks of the year, many for the positive. I can't wait to see what we can do as a country to build upon our clean water, our clean air, our better environment, making sure we have the best drilling jobs out their slots that's going to happen in the weeks to come. Keep your team safe, make sure they're heard. Continue to progress this industry because we progress civilization by discovering the subsurface. Thanks to all the great academics out there that are releasing these papers and showing us from the Grace Satellite programs to crown water modeling and mapping to the University of Oregon, Princeton, Western Michigan University, Colorado University, University of Arizona. There's so many amazing groundwater professionals and experts out there that want to help. Let's collaborate with them and do more and do better. Have a great week, everybody.