Abstract
Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, a rapidly growing city across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas with a 2005 population in excess of 1.2 million, relies exclusively on ground water from an aquifer known as the Hueco Bolson. The aquifer’s fresh water is being depleted and it is degrading in quality due to the lateral inflow of brackish water. Although the Hueco Bolson’s fresh water is diminishing, it still contains a considerable quantity of brackish water. This paper defines the feasibility of using desalination technology in conjunction with concentrate storage to extend the ‘life’ of the Juárez portion of the Hueco Bolson. Well injection of the concentrate was analyzed based on the premise that the cones of depression created by well pumping could provide a storage area for the concentrate. So doing would enable the brackish concentrate to be ‘stored’ for future use when advances in desalination technology will render the stored concentrate into an economically recoverable resource , unlike evaporation ponds that result in the permanent loss of water due to vaporization. The research team used a combination of three software systems for this portion of the analysis: a ground water modeling software, a mass transport extension to the ground water modeling software, and GIS software to facilitate the visualization of model outputs. The technical report on which this paper is based was authored by Turner and Hamlyn (2004).
Comments
Abstracts of presentations given on Tuesday, 18 July 2006, in session 1 of the UCOWR Conference.