 To think bingo, welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel, your host, and this is Research in Manoa here on Monday. Today we have as our guest Nicole Laozi, Ph.D., Assistant Researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii. That's H-I-G-P-S-O-E-S-T-U-H Manoa. She's going to share her research on geothermal and sustainable energy and on water, physical volcanology, natural hazard. That's what she does. We learn how Nicole's work has advanced the Hawaii groundwater and geothermal resources center. Welcome to the show, Nicole. Thank you, Jay. Great to have you here again. Thank you. Good to be here. So, let's talk about what's going on in water. You know, last time we checked in on this was with Don Thomas, who I know for a long time. And you're working with him, and he was telling us about this new discovery on the Big Island and maybe his Oahu also, where you found new water, you guys. This is a great contribution by UH Manoa and H-I-G-P and SOEST and all that to our lives here in, you know, because water may not be completely plentiful forever. And this discovery, what is the discovery? That's correct. Well, what Don had a drilling project on the Pahakaloa training area facility of the Big Island, so pretty much the center of the Big Island, and the accepted model, prevailing model for where, how deep that water would be, would be at about sea level. And so he was, started drilling at about two kilometers elevation, and so the anticipation was you would drill about two kilometers until you found fresh water. You mean, stopped, started to top the mountain? Yep. About two kilometers water, over sea level, is that what it is? Yeah, right, above sea level, yeah. It's 13,000 feet, that's about two kilometers? About 6,000 feet is about two kilometers, so not the top of a mountain, but it was in the saddle, so the saddle between H-I-G-P, yeah, at the road. And instead he found fresh water very shallowly, he could tell you specifically how shallowly, but he found a series of perched aquifers, so that means there's some type of rock that's holding the water up, and he drilled through that, through several perched aquifers before he found the water table at something like 800 meters down. Below sea level? No, above, down, so that would be 1200 meters above sea level, 1.2 kilometers above sea level. That's remarkable, is it water above the water table? Yes, water above the water table, and then the fact that the water table itself was that shallow, so that would be a resource that's available, and normally people don't want to drill very deep and have to pump that water up to the surface extremely far, because pumping is a high energy cost. So now it's above, you can let gravity speed you with the water, no? No, you still need to pump it to the surface, because it's above sea level, but the surface is higher. Oh, the surface is where you started drilling, yeah, yeah, yeah. The surface is still higher. Is there something that, you know, you want to put in the general nature, it's a big discovery? It should go in something like that, the thing is Don's so busy, I don't think that's time to write the paper. First the research, then the writing. Yeah, but I believe the Army is pursuing that, a production well to use that groundwater. Oh, they would actually use it, they would use it for a pahakaloa. Yeah, because at the moment what they're doing is trucking in their fresh water for training purposes, and that's a long way to truck fresh water. So ironic, water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink except you're sitting on an aquifer right there. And relevant to geothermal what he found is that there was elevated temperature at depth, so about the bottom 500 meters, so they did go ahead and drill two kilometers, roughly 1.8 kilometers, and they had to stop drilling because the water got too hot. Ah, hot, so that's the connection. Yeah, there you go. The title of this show, if I didn't mention it, is Understanding Hawaii's Groundwater and Geothermal Resources, and there's a connection between groundwater and geothermal, why don't you tell me the connection? Well, geothermal requires a fluid, and so that fluid can be steam or steam connected to water, right? So basically we need to characterize the groundwater system as a step A, and then find warm groundwater to potentially tap into a geothermal resource. I gotta take a moment and digress for a moment and give kudos to UH Minoa. I'd like to do that. Thanks. There was a piece on 60 Minutes, a fellow named Brown, out of one of the campuses of the University of California, I think it was. And he discovered, he's in the process of discovering another planet out there, called Planet Number 9. They have not been able to actually get a handle on it, but they believe from the gravity. This is HIGP stuff, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. The gravity flow of the objects around this area where they think it might be, they've modeled that things seem to be moving influenced by a very large mass out there, and although they haven't seen it, they surmise that's Planet Number 9. And so what's the one in the area, Jupiter, I think it is? Jupiter is not so big, they found that Jupiter is relatively small, but Planet Number 9 would be many, many times the size of Jupiter. Jupiter? Yeah. So they sort of, they demoted Jupiter, and now they're trying to find and promote this other, okay? And in the course of discussing this on 60 Minutes last night, it was fascinating. I mean, you know, people so excited about this stuff, we should all be excited about this stuff. He said that they could not do this without monarchy. Monarchy on the Big Island in Hawaii is critical to finding out what's going on and discovering Planet Number 9 and, you know, getting a handle on not only Planet Number 9, but other planets that we haven't been able to see yet. What he said was Planet Number 9 was for this generation of researchers. There's another planet, call it 10 out there, which we can't see yet. It's further out, but with the help of some, you know, big telescopes, you know, TMT comes to mind here. Yeah. We'll be able to see that. And anyway, the message was we are really at the frontiers of the universe now, and the telescopes in Monarchy are critical to American research interests, and that with TMT, we could find Planet Number 10. And it's just my wife and me, which is so sad to see this, wondering what in the world, why would anyone want to stop this level of world-class, human-class research that puts Hawaii on the map forever and ever? Never mind. I just had to say that. Yeah. Back to water. I hear you. So the connection then in a practical way between, you know, the water and the geothermal is that if you're digging for water, you might find geothermal. And there's a well now. There's a well, an experimental water well on the Big Island that was really, that recently closed, and the state spent 3. something million dollars to close it. I don't understand that story at all. Can you help me? I'm not entirely familiar with it. The state has just chosen to plug and abandon, I think, is the correct terminology. Two wells, I believe, were formally used in the geothermal realm. I'm not sure if they were exploratory wells or they were actually production wells, what they were. I believe that they were not in use for some time. And so then the question arises as to what to do with the well that's sitting in the ground. And so the choice was to plug it, meaning fill it with cement, I think, and abandon it, leave it. Three million dollars worth of cement? Yeah. Why would anyone want to plug it? Why not use it for something, right? As a monitoring well or something? There's a, you know, access into the ground as well. Of course they're very expensive to drill. And then you'd hoped that they could be maintained and used. I had the impression that plugging it was a political statement. Am I right? I don't know. No, I don't think so. I think that the well is actually plugged. Already? I wish Don was here. Later on we'll cover that. But the message is that when you're drilling for water, you could find geothermal. Yes. So every water exploration well is potentially a geothermal well. Right. But we try and do a lot of things before we drill to best understand a system because drilling is so expensive. Now we're getting to the meat of this. Yeah. How do we find that out? How do we know it's down there before we drill? You do that, don't you? That's what, yeah. That's what I do with the other projects they're trying to do right now is to better understand Hawaii's groundwater system. A lot, what Don's drilling project, Army-funded drilling project showed or demonstrated is that there's a lot that we don't know about Hawaii's groundwater systems. And so there's a number of projects currently at UH Manoa working on trying to better understand what happens with our groundwater once it infiltrates into the ground. How do you do that? You do that. You can do that a lot of ways. And so one of the things that we're doing is a groundwater sampling campaign around the state and so collect groundwater samples from existing well, do a lot of chemistry on them. One thing that we're doing is using oxygen and hydrogen isotopes that are in the groundwater samples we collect to trace groundwater flow. So one thing that's very poorly understood in most of the state is the groundwater flow path. So from where it originates, where does it flow, where is it stored and where does it discharge, probably in the submarine environment. And so we use what we call tracer studies to try and understand that. And mostly natural tracers. So by collecting samples from wells in diverse locations along where we think groundwater is flowing and then outside we can try and identify some chemical species in those groundwater samples that's unique. And so trace groundwater flow from one well to another. So it's a matter of going around from well to well, source to source, taking a sample and then examining that sample and see if there are common denominators between this sample and that sample. Because that would tell you, it's like looking for DNA, isn't it? I would tell you if they came from the same source. How interesting. So what do you check the water for? Do you do that? Do you have a laboratory where you look at the water? I'm working with a graduate student who's fabulous on collecting the samples and we send them to various labs. So we're using three different labs on the UH campus right now, right on UH Mino's campus. One analysis is for trace metals. One is for oxygen, hydrogen and carbon isotopes. And one is for major ions. So we get kind of a complete suite of chemistry. We also do an alkalinity analysis. We will get things like pH and temperature. And then try and put it all together. So it's like trying to put a puzzle together. So these samples are drinking water. I mean, what you're pulling up is drinking water. Mostly drinking water, yes. Mostly drinking water, also monitoring wells. So there's wells drilled into the ground for various purposes. Some are monitoring, looking for contaminants. They're not necessarily purified for drinking water. Some are drilled for drinking water. So pretty much any and all well that's in an area that we're interested in studying will collect samples. And you find contaminants too, I guess. We're not specifically looking for contaminants. We're looking for contaminants that we work with people that are specifically interested in finding contaminants. So you make a profile of the sample. I'm sure there's a spreadsheet here where you identify all these things and then give it a value or an amount per whatever it is. Concentration of something. And so how many fields on the spreadsheet? I'm just so curious. Where specifically? I mean, 40? 40. Yeah. Okay. And then you can make an algorithm to check out the fields and identify that sample and then compare what you get from using the algorithm on the spreadsheet for one sample as opposed to another sample. And then you can, ah, so exciting. Yeah. And then you're looking at the two samples or more and you say, my God, they're related. It's like DNA. It's like ancestry.com. It's DNA. Yeah. And in fact, there's another project that we have where one of the team members, not myself, but as a microbiologist and so actually looking at the bugs, the microbes in samples to see if there's specific micro communities. Exactly. It is actually, in fact, in DNA that can be traced to given water sources. Because one of the big questions, the state of Hawaii has aquifers, right? Aquifer boundaries that are lines drawn on a map. But one question is, are those hard aquifers so that water in one aquifer doesn't interact with water in another aquifer? And in fact, I've learned that most people don't think, in fact, they're hard boundaries. So there's some water flow across them. And how much is a big question, too? And you can find that out with this kind of research. We can have, try to gain some insight into, how much question is a hard one? Yeah. Yeah. Which percentage of water from one aquifer is flowing into another? Well, for hard questions, Nicole, we get a headache and we take a break. Yeah, okay. So I'm going to call out C. H-I-G-P-S-O-S-U-H-Manoa, talking about underground water, groundwater and geothermal resources and the relationship of the whole state, the whole system, looking into our geology, I suppose. That's right. We'll be right back. Hey, how you doing? Welcome to Batchi Talk. My name is Andrew Lening. I'm your co-host. And we have a nice program here every Friday at 1 o'clock. Think Tech Studios, where we talk about technology and we have a little bit of fun with it. So join us if you can. Thanks. Aloha. Aloha and Happy New Year. It's 2017. Please keep up with me on Power Up Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to talk about a clean and just energy future. Please join me on Tuesdays at 1 o'clock. Mahalo. Aloha. My name is John Wahee. And I actually had a small part to do with what's happening today. Served actually in public office. But if you don't already know that, here's a chance to learn more about what's happening in our state by joining me for a talk story with John Wahee every other Monday. Thank you. And I look forward to your seeing us in the future. Haik. We're back. Nicole Latzi. She is a research assistant researcher. Pardon me. No problem. At the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, HIGP, in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at UH Manoa, working on understanding Hawaii's groundwater and geothermal resources. So at the end, we're driving toward a map. So you can look, you know, spatially at Hawaii and see what's where in terms of water. And I suppose warm water and warm water means geothermal. And there's a lot of warm water down there. So it's not just analyzing samples that you drill. It's more than that. In order to get the full picture, what else do you do to get the full picture? Yeah, the collecting groundwater samples I was just describing is just one technique. That helps us better understand the groundwater system. Another key one is surface geophysics. So there's several different types of geophysics that we can do. But what geophysics does is give us a picture of subsurface structures. So rock types. Geo stands for geology. Geo stands for geology. You heard it here on Think Tech. I want everybody to understand that. Yeah, so there's different things we can do to try and understand subsurface structures that influence groundwater storage and flow. And so we are and have some projects that are planning to do some surface geophysics to help us understand the presence of subsurface structures that influence groundwater flow. And also some of the geophysics can tell us or give us insight into where the groundwater might be. And whether it's fresh water or saline water, whether it's cool water or warm water. It's like a three-dimensional map. That's what we're after. You're after a three-dimensional map. You want to know what happens at 20 feet, 40 feet, 60 feet, and so forth. How do you develop a three-dimensional map with geophysics? How do you do that? It's a lot of work. So we usually put instruments out on the ground, either a line or a grid. And then we have information about the surface below that or maybe in an arc below that instrument that we lay on the ground for some amount of time. And then the geophysicist piece it all together into a subsurface map. And we try to integrate that so it can tell us, you know, seismicity, for example, tells you... Seismicity is the sounds of the Earth. The sound waves. Coming, emanating from the Earth. I mean, you're not sending signals down, you're just getting them on the way. You can do either way. Either way. So passive or active seismics. Passive, you have a tectonic movement somewhere on the Earth and so you're just detecting changes from that earthquake that occurred someplace. Active, you do actually have an active source. Like radar. It has the same bounce back kind of thing. Right. So, oh, that's so interesting. So you get this, you get this back and then somebody is making another spreadsheet of exactly how it behaves when you either get active or passive sound back from it. And that will help you develop a three-dimensional picture of the layers of stuff down there. Will it tell you what's there? What kind of rock is there? Will it tell you how hard or soft it is, how hot or cold? Yeah, we have to make some inferences but the velocity of the sound wave changes with the properties of the rock. And so if it's a dense rock, like intrusives, we call them dykes in the subsurface, the sound wave velocity will be different than if it's our subarial lava flows. So two rock types we know we have a lot of in Hawaii are lava flows that erupt on the surface and flow slowly like is happening at Kilauea Volcano right now. Yeah. So those rocks have a lot of bubbles in them. If you look at an outcrop or a rock cut someplace, most of Hawaii is this type of rock. It's called subarial lava flows, subarially erupted lava flows. And so they're very permeable, very porous, not very dense relative to magma that tries to come up and erupt on the surface but gets stuck. Then those bubbles don't come out, so that rock is very dense and so the sound wave velocity will change. And so where we have dykes, which are the magma that does erupt, the denser structure, the sound wave velocity is going to be higher. And if there's a cluster of those, we might be able to see that in a seismic map. When you do this, do you take a large area or is it pinpoint right down in one spot? It depends. It really depends. So the seismic survey design or the geophysical survey design depends on the question that we're trying to answer. So you can do large, you know, across an entire rift zone that you're trying to characterize, something like that, or you can have something very localized. You know what strikes me that Hawaii is like heaven for a geologist. There's more variation, more diversity. Lots of unanswered questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a piece in the civil beat, I think it was this morning, said that Hawaii researchers are happier. Really? Well, relative to other schools, other places. And, you know, Hawaii is a magnet, especially in this area because it is heaven for a geologist. Yeah, no complaints here. That's great. Okay, so now you're getting the sound wave reports back, making up a second spreadsheet or something, and then you're going to combine the two spreadsheets, the two algorithms. Tell me how that works. Well, eventually we just want to improve our conceptual model, let's say. So we want to be able to draw a map of the subsurface that is more realistic representation based on the information that we've gathered. So, you know, if we, from collecting our groundwater samples, we say groundwater is not flowing from A to B, but it is flowing from A to C. And in our seismic survey or geophysical survey suggests there's a boundary between A and B. So we draw that line on a map and we can project that into the subsurface. However deep we've got the seismic image back for. Yeah. Right? And if you know the permeability of the material down there, you can also make a guess at whether the water is going to move. Right. From one system, one place to another. Exactly. Yeah. So that opens the question of whether the old system, which Thomas told us was, you know, developed by the engineers in around 1940 or so. Strings and McDonald's, yep. Yes, right. Yeah. And it gave us water from 1940 on. I mean, lots of water, great water, perfect water. I mean, we were famous for, still are, for our clear water, clean water. Yep. Until the new system. And now we find the new system is located in a slightly different place in the strata. And you're trying to figure out if there's a connection. Yeah. So Hawaii's fortunate to have quite a lot of fresh water. It rains a lot here. We have very permeable rock on the surface mostly, so we don't have a lot of lakes, not a lot of perennial. I'd like to see more lakes myself. Lakes are fun. Then they filled in poor Lake Wilson and salt lake. They filled that into, you know, see more lakes. Anyway, go ahead. And so, yeah, we have an abundance of fresh water. And so, yeah, we haven't struggled too much, but with increasing development and climate change, we have some challenges facing us. So better understanding our groundwater system and increasing contaminants with increasing population. You know, we need to pay attention to the quality of our groundwater. So what I hear you saying is that going forward, for one reason or influence or another, we should be a little concerned about the 1940s model, because that's not forever. Right. What, do you run out or it just goes contamination or what? If we over pump in Hawaii because we're an ocean island environment, our fresh water sits on salt water. And if we take too much water out too quickly, the fear is that we're going to have salt water contamination. So our fresh water sitting on salt water will pump, pump, pump. That brings the salt water up. And damages the lens. Yeah, damages the lens. And the lens doesn't repair itself so quick. Yeah, it may not, depending on the amount of rain, which we can't necessarily rely on and the permeability of the rocks or the hydraulic conductivity. So, well, do you have a sense now that the new system that you guys found, and kudos to you for that, I may not be the journal science, but I'm giving you kudos anyway. If the new system is actually feeding into the old system or vice versa, do you have a sense of that yet? Well, the old, the old model just said the fresh water would be down a lot further. And so there would be less fresh water. Instead it looks like there's a lot of fresh water in the center of the big island and it's sitting a lot higher, right? And those two factors are related. And can we each... Well, let's assume there must be some connection but it's not a big connection, right? And each one is like its own, may I say, bubble. So the question then is can you change that? Would you want to change that? Or would you want to open this new discovery as a separate source and just draw from that? And this is a multiple compound question. And then how do you do that? Well, the two are certainly connected because it was more like think of it more as an old model, right? And now recent data shows that old model didn't reflect reality. Not that that's an incorrect model because the science, the principles it's based on are sound. And we got water at it. But instead what Don found was a dike impounded system. So there are these geologic structures that nobody knew about and why would they? Because they're in the subsurface that are affecting... You need high tech to find them. Yes. You have the high tech. Yes, now we have the high tech. They didn't have it before so that new technology can find new things. So those models were really the best that could be put together at that time. It's fair enough. But they just showed groundwater would be, again, not as high. Instead there's geologic structures in the subsurface that are affecting flow out. So flow is not happening out. It's getting stuck in the center of the big island and pushing that freshwater lens up higher. So there's more freshwater there, which we could take advantage of. Right. So to me the risk is that we have to go where San Diego went and spend $10 billion. We can't afford it, honestly. $10 billion on desalination on one island or the other in order to get water when the lens breaks and contamination and sea level rise affects our existing aquifers. So this is a whole new source. So how do you tap it? If I made you the chief engineer for the state of Hawaii, they don't have one actually. And I said, Nicole, can you please tap this water? What would you do to get it and put it in our water system? Well, drill a production well. So the wells that were drilled were exploration wells. So the diameter of the well is really small. Just to get down so we can see what's there. You hold your hands this way. I get four or five inches there. I think it started with a three inch diameter at the top and then you have to make it a little wider as vice versa. Started wider at the top, a little narrower, but three to five inches is the diameter. So you need a big one now. Yeah. For production, you need a bigger one. Bigger diameter, so we're talking like 16 inches, something like that. It's that simple, though. The exploration well will tell you there's water there. You might as well follow the same track, open it up, and then I guess you've got to pump it out. Pump it out, so then you need to install a pump. And then you've got to run pipes wherever you need to take it. Yeah, right. So I think because this is Army land, the Army's looking at investing in drilling this production well and they'll use it locally for Pahakaloa for their training facility. So this is a work in progress, isn't it? It is a work in progress. And though the big thing that it demonstrates is that there is water in the saddle, right? We don't know necessarily how extensive that is, but if we use the data from the geophysical survey that was done to identify that well location, and we can assume that where data showed there would be water, there is water pervasively, then it can benefit other landowners out there. And DHHL, Department of Hawaiian Homeland, owns some land out there. And I believe not much is done with that land because the assumption was there's no water to do anything with that land. It's a whole new world. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this is very exciting. I must say you're in a very exciting time and a very exciting issue with the, you know, the diminution of water around us, and you found all this water, and you found a system that could actually suggest that the same kind of strata could be elsewhere in the state. You got more. So I want to rename the show to Eureka. Eureka, there's water in the saddle. That's it. That's Nicole Lousy, assistant researcher of Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Plantatology, School of Ocean Earth Science and Technology, in which we know we're doing great things for science, great things for the state. Thank you so much. Thank you. Is that all of it? Yeah. Why? You want more? No. She wants to go back on.