CONTROLLING THE FLOW
California’s Water Supply Eroding under Pressure
Water trickles down massive failure in Oroville spillway February 8, 2017, causing town to be evacuated
Building a dam spillway—theoretically for excess water release in storms—can have its engineering headaches, especially when material chosen for landfill is a legacy of California’s 1849 Goldrush.
Silt built up during 19thC. gold-panning days was used in early 1960s, alongside local sandstone, to construct a backup system for California’s second-largest [electricity-generating] dam at Oroville, despite knowledge that sand and silt from river erosion takes years to settle. And preferably a series of dry years, without rain storms. When it rains, the emergency—earth sluice—is expected to handle any excess.
This year at Oroville both main spillway and emergency failed.
Dammed if we Do and Damned if we Don’t
Oroville Dam, California’s 2nd largest, overflows February 2017
Department of Water Resources has charge of maintaining an adequate water system for agriculture in the adjacent Central Valley, but it is also responsible for maintaining water aqueducts and two pipelines to supply 3.8million households in Southern California.
In addition to the bonus of the Dam’s production of hydro-electric power for the State.
But background to this important water resource reveals shaky foundations.
Despite a crucial rainstorm flood over Christmas 1964, the incomplete dam was launched by Gov.Ronald Reagan in May 1968, during a week-long festival in Oroville attended by 50,000 visitors.
Ten years later, a massive series of earthquakes hit Oroville in August 1975.
Lori Dengler, Professor Emeritus of Geology at HSU, then a graduate student at UC Berkeley, was obsessed with the seismic ‘swarm’ that shook the dam and its surrounding “surface faulting”—a cluster of fault lines—similar to Petrolia. To her, earthquake reaction came after water levels were dramatically changed.
During the winter of 1974-1975, the lake was drawn down to its lowest level since inauguration, to repair the intakes to the power plant. It was then rapidly refilled and followed by the earthquake sequence of 1975.
Cluster of seismic fault lines, with epicenter at Oroville, CA
August 1, 1975 a Mag.5.8 earthquake hit Oroville. Quakes of this size can occur anywhere in the state, so its size was no surprise. This had been a seismically quiet area, however, and those of us working in the lab noticed when seven earthquakes in the Magnitude-3 range occurred in a tight cluster near the lake. On August 1st, the seismicity ramped up—a Mag.4.7, a Mag.5.8 and 35 additional tremors in the Magnitude-3 range. Vigorous aftershocks continued with over 200 earthquakes in the magnitude-3 range recorded over the next 18 months. Then things quieted down and no earthquakes of Magnitude-3 or larger have been recorded near Oroville since 1992.
It’s not unusual for an earthquake sequence to pop up out of the blue, but the difference in Oroville was two factors linking the earthquakes to the filling of the reservoir. The first was the proximity to the lake, the location of surface faulting and the tightly clustered epicenter locations. The second factor was that the earthquakes followed an unprecedented seasonal fluctuation in lake levels.
Lori Dengler, Prof. Emeritus, Humboldt State University
Time Travel to the Tertiary
Taking a time machine back to 1975 and 1968, Oroville might never have been built
The Foothills Fault System—which includes faults like Cleveland Hills, Spenceville, Deadman, Maidu, Prairie Creek, Swain Ravine and Willows—skirts east of Folsom Lake and runs through Auburn, Placerville, El Dorado Hills and Shingle Springs. The system runs from Mariposa to Chico. The 1975 Magnitude 6.1Richter Oroville earthquake was caused by movement along the Cleveland Hills fault.
For more than a century, the Foothills were considered seismically inactive. That changed with the 1975 Oroville earthquake. The temblor did not cause much damage outside the sparsely-populated Oroville area, but it did have a major impact.
The scientific community had to reassess the large Sierra Foothills area as seismically active, according to the California Geological Survey.
Sutter Butte extinct cinder cone, foreground, overlooks valley of Sacramento River channeled, top, east to Oroville dam along Sierra Foothills Willows fault-line
“The Auburn Dam was being built at the time and for design purposes we were asked to estimate how large an earthquake the system could generate. We estimated a Magnitude-6.5 Richter, capable of displacing the dam’s foundation by about three-quarters of a foot. That sent the dam back to the drawing board. The cost multiplied over time, and the dam was never built.”
Michael Reichle, Asst. Director Dept. of Conservation
California Geological Survey
Oil and Gas Wells in Sunken Bedrock Add Instability
Data from a number of (USGS) sources indicate that the Willows fault is far more extensive and complex than previously thought and that Tertiary deposits in the Foothills are in motion. The first clue that the Willows fault branched into a multistrand fault system was provided by an analysis of seismicity of the northern valley and Sierra foothills after the Oroville earthquake. USGS (in 1978) located a number of small-magnitude earthquakes along a zone that originated near the Marathon “Capital Company No. 1” well in the Willows-Beehive Bend gas field and extended north, rather than following the northwest trend of the Willows fault. A slew of seismic events suggested that a north-trending fault splayed off from the main stem of the Willows fault and passed west of the Corning domes.
On the east side of the valley, Upper Cretaceous sandstone and shale rest uncomfortably on metamorphic and plutonic rocks of the Sierra Nevada.
These bed companions are not made any more comfortable by the instability of the great seismic rift which stretches from Mariposa (Yosemite) in the south to Chico and Cottonwood, just S of Redding, in the north. The bedrock first went through onset of marine sedimentation (W to E) in the late Mesozoic era, and through intermittent periods of uplift and subduction the sand and shale—along with their mountain bedfellows—tilted to south and west. In late Cretaceous the reverse occurred and the sand/shale deposits slid westwards—’marine regression’ (E to W).
During these upheaval and subsidence cycles, four submarine canyons developed—cut and then filled, rifting and then flooded with sediment. Where they meet, near Sutter Butte cinder cone, above, movement both east and west continues.
Riverbank Collapse on Dam Shutdown Leaves Salmon Floundering
Riverbank collapse after dam spillway shut off March 3, 2017 leaving salmon hatcheries & farmers floundering
In the Corning gas fields, analysis of well records by the Sacramento Petroleum Association (1962) showed an anticlinal fold in the area of the Corning domes, with about 121m of maximum closure on the base of the Tehama Formation in the north dome and a steeply dipping southeast-trending fault located at the north end of south Corning dome, but it did not identify a fault west of them.
California Geological Survey
With a new gap in the main spillway now stretching like a fifteen-lane freeway across the cement foundation, immediate closure of Oroville Dam was announced this week. Such a drastic move is in part attributed to safety of those displaced valley residents who have since been allowed to return to their homes and orchards.
Oakdale Heights school children release Chinook hatchlings into Feather River last fall
Salmon young and riverine residents are now without a river bed, as most of the banks have collapsed. Almond, peach orchards and fruit farms, dependent on a seasonal flow of water, were unprepared for such extreme measures, their irrigation systems now high and dry. Salmon fingerlings and immature Chinook die in stranded pools, life-expectancy zero.
Children from Oakdale Heights school, above left, releasing babies last fall into the river, expected their hatchlings to have at least a one-percent chance of survival, on their return from the ocean, are now dismayed by the zero percent outcome for the salmon after dam failure.
Governor Jerry Brown has pledged financial help for storm-affected communities, but the state of California has already unmet infrastructure costs of $187 billion, not including roads. While $2.7 billion has been approved [Prop.1, 2014] for new water storage, that doesn’t cover old dams.
Remembering the warning of seismologists Reichle and Dengler, above, against any sudden changes in water body movement—which can trigger volcanic fault movement—we await the outcome of the shutdown decision with anxiety. It’s not only the salmon spelt, rescued manually from puddles, it’s the water supply for most of the Great Valley.
“6.6mag. Taiwan S.Japan location 24º129'N 122º335E 01a.m. UTC April 20. 2015
Four hours ago, a massive 6.6 magnitude Richter earthquake hit coastal Taiwan and Southern Japan. Local agencies, already overburdened with ongoing (nuclear) clean-up, continue to report. Minimal U.S. press coverage—slow to extract reports from the world arena in (western) night-time, unless specifically targeted—may find that differences in international dateline/time-zones may not result in this event’s being buried, It may not fit into a neat, orderly media-orchestrated political schedule.
There are ramifications, however—especially for western U.S.A.
EarthCrisis or Early Warning?
Minimum ‘safe’ height: 146ft—most of Tsunami Alley: sea-level
MAGNITUDE 6.6 mwp
Location / uncertainty 24.129°N 122.335°E± 5.4 km
Depth / uncertainty 28.9 km± 4.4
Origin time 2015-04-20 01:42:58.470 UTC
Source: USGS
Two groups of Native American elders have summoned their communities, in preparation for uprooting and a move inland, away from their traditional ocean-listening posts. In San Luis Obispo county, a small nucleus of Chumash, originally ‘whale-whisperer sea-shell people’from Morro Bay to Malibu—their traditional lodges and burial grounds long-since displaced by ex-pat. Ventura- and Topanga Canyon-ites—have returned to hear “repeated warnings from our cetacean siblings” that we are endangering our homeland.
Washington Tribe prepare for Move to High Ground
The Quileute tribe of La Push, Washington holds a ritual each year, where every woman, man and child in the reservation summons local whales, dolphins, sharks, seals and other marine species to the community’s beach by playing drums. The tribe’s chief then wades among the animals and interprets their sounds.
Cetacean whisperers help us tune in—use it before we lose it
In 2014, tribal leaders were “summoned” by Pacific Ocean whales, to alert them to a tsunami, ‘soon’ to engulf their community. La Push is located at the intersection of three tectonic plates, prone to earthquakes of nine-point magnitude. The tribe immediately started to make plans to move their community to higher ground. It applied for and received money from both the State of Washington and the federal government, to fund the relocation. Synchronously, assistance has been offered to Quileute elders by Finland’s University of Aalto, in designing their new settlement. In Finland’s Baltic and Arctic Oceans, they are also brother-whale-whisperers.
Wilderness no Longer Wild
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness” John Muir
John Muir—progenitor and founder of first U.S. National Park—would be proud of us, his descendants. While he was born in lowland Scotland and thus learned how precious is wild forest floor—Scotland’s indigenous trees mostly eaten by commercial sheep enterprises— un-mangled [by humans] tangled growth. Yet we seem oblivious of our continuing and unrelenting pollution of our only home.
Radioactive Slush
Gallons of slush and ice melt flood Great Lakes and Chicago hinterland.
Combination of Fracking, waste water recycling, human negligence, cause man-made quakes in U.S. central states
Sudden floods in New England, the Carolinas-coastal Virginia cause concern over contaminated drinking water supply. Marinas in Coral Gables, Everglades and Gulf states, Alabama, Louisiana and eastern Texas are revamping water towers last used in Hurricane Katrina, to cope with extra demand. Meanwhile Four Corners, Gila Bend, Arizona, Utah, Nevada—don’t even think of temperatures in Death Valley—and in a geographical spread as far east as Idaho, Kansas and Minnesota, high winds bring risk of grass fires.
Half the country is burning up, while the other half flounders in rising sea levels.
Do we still deny we have a hand in this? Are we pretending we don’t know what’s going on?
Competing for Cleanliest
Last week California Governor Jerry Brown scoffed at Florida governor’s amorous advances for a tourism “exchange”. While organic Californians greatly outnumber Brooklyn retirees in the balmy Everglades and Fort Lauderdale, in ecological terms, neither state can boast a totally clean city.
Echoes from Earth’s Chasms—Ring of Fire Rumbles into Activity
X-Class Solar flares emerging from the ‘hidden’ side of the Sun, add a frisson to so-called normal spring weather. Global extremes have caused great loss of life, however.
There’s more to come.
Triggered by solar CMEs incoming—bombarding Earth’s heat shield to stretching point, dormant volcanoes along subterranean ridges and lava reservoirs of the Ring of Fire are exploding.
Ring of Fire—Seismic Deeps and Ridges of the Pacific Ocean: festering to blow
Sewage and polluted water are high-profile questions that affect the whole human Earth-population.
When the dice are rolled, who gets the blame for leading humanity over the edge of the world——?
Unfortunately for Governor Brown—and for all his supporters south of Sacramento—the WWII-aircraft carrier U.S. Independence has been rediscovered on the ocean floor, in San Diego’s back yard. However supposedly :safely: out of sight, according to U.S. National Ocean and Atmospheric Administrqtion (NOAA) Chief Science officer, James Delgado, the hulk, used for monitoring hydrogen bomb tests on Bikini Atoll in South Pacific’s Marshall Islands was deliberately sunk off San Diego’s beaches, carrying one hundred barrels of nuclear waste in its hold.
Bikini Atoll: no Place for Bikinis Now
NOAA make light of the rediscovery:
WWII. aircraft carrier, U.S. Independence, scarred in Pacific battle theater
“After 64 years on the seafloor, Independence sits on the bottom as if ready to launch its planes”
J.Delgado, Chief NOAA Science officer
Damaged in WWII, aircraft carrier US Independence found intact April 2015 in Pacific waters carrying nuclear waste
A half-buried metal ship full of discarded nuclear waste is not what U.S.Navy residential retirement community of Coronado needs. Not to mention its hold, stuffed with radioactive bricks, concrete and mortar—’in case of leakage’—lies now exposed to every little rattle emanating from the San Andreas fault and its tributaries stretching south into Baja California. Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills experienced two middle-range quakes last week. Pasadena and San Marino residents live constantly with shaking mantels.
Sentient Earth
In cyclone-hit Philippines, residents live their lives in the shadow of a stratovolcano.
Pinatubo still fuming a century later
Fifty years to the day, volcanic activity around the planet regurgitates ash, debris and detritus from its dormant cone, as if marking the event in EARTH’s calendar, Earth‘s schedule, Earth’s Grand Plan.
Residents of Pinatubo‘s local island Luzon—unlike the cancer-prone residents of Bikini—still recount stories their grandfathers told of wildlife death toll, relocation and readjustment to life under a stratovolcano’s gaze.
Shooting Stars on Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Five years on: NorthAtlantic ridge giant, Eyjafjallajökull, used pyroclastic flows to delay SpaceShuttle Discovery’s reentry to Earth
It is also five years since Iceland’s volcanic-field-cum-ice flow blasted ash and pyroclastic mush into the North Atlantic, delaying the return of NASA’s last space shuttle, Discovery.
Their favorite volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, standing proud in a 33-mile wide lava field, is still smoldering, shooting reminders up into the stratosphere along the fault held loosely by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In case anyone farther afield is listening, Herta, Surtsey are telling us Earth has its own idea of marking anniversaries.
Perhaps we should go along with the conclusion drawn by an old veteran WWII Lancaster bomber navigator friend, who only last week decided to slough off this mortal coil at the youthful age of 95:
Combination of Earth’s silicate core, presence of Iridium and solar flares gives us our weather. It’s the CORIOLIS EFFECT.
Commander (retd.) Sandy (Gogo) Constable, RAF
MobyDuck on his world cruise: 28,800 plastic toys circling the globe
They’re turning up everywhere: surprising delighted beachcombers from the shores of the Outer Hebrides to the sands of Malibu. It’s the Rubber Ducky Armada, with the world as their bathtub.
In January 1992 a Hong Kong container ship caught in a cyclone tossed two rows of containers overboard. One broke open and released 28,800 plastic bath toys into the Pacific at a point where the 45th parallel meets the International Date Line 44.7°N, 178.1°E. A score years later, beachcombers are still picking up the four toy varieties on the Pacific rim: (not just) yellow duckies, (but also), green frogs, red beaver and blue turtles.
Bleached in transit: plastic duckies/frogs/turtles retrieved by the Seattle beachcomber project
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch’s oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white
Samuel T Coleridge
Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Twenty years on, these little critters are still appearing on beaches — and not just round the Pacific. They’re on the move: now they can be found stranded on the shore from the Hebrides in Scotland, to Hawaii, to Nantucket, to Sitka, Alaska, where a record number of 111 toys beached within the first decade. Scientists have in the meantime succeeding in mapping a working route through the world’s oceans by tracking the movement of the rest of these little floaters. Some have even been cut by Inuit fishermen out of the Arctic ice.
Through Arctic ice, duckies head south to meet the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic
Both Seattle oceanographer, Dr Curtis Ebbesmeyer, and world traveler and author Donovan Hohn are using their route as a cautionary tale. This ‘duck-current’ navigates the Bering Strait, Arctic ice and the Greenland Gap, falling into the north Atlantic where it drifts south (cold) past New York, scoops up tropical warm from the Bermuda Triangle and returns north as the Gulf Stream to the North of Scotland. Sound romantic? Perhaps, yet the cautionary tale told by these ocean biologists to alert the rest of us, sitting in our comfort zone, is that our wasteful habits are now so thoughtless that they potentially threaten all lifeforms — including our own.
“I took to heart something said by Beth Flint, a wildlife biologist I spoke to in Hawaii, who said, ‘Be careful. As striking as the images of plastics are, there are more invisible impacts that demand attention.'”
‘Plastics, I think, are useful in this measure because we can’t see greenhouse gases that are absorbed by the oceans, and you can’t see PCBs, DDT, or agricultural runoff. So, plastics act as a bellwether’ Donovan Hohn, author Moby Duck: 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea, British release February 23rd
“I think it’s all about incongruity. These tiny Friendly Floatees are the epitome of childhood, an icon of bathtime. To think of them bobbing out there on the harsh, vast, wild ocean is funny; it seems like a joke.”
But it’s not.
Currents carry drifters around the Subpolar Gyre in 3years, around the Subtropical Gyre in 6years. Flotsam can circulate in the Garbage Patch for half a century
I have blogged before about the North Pacific Gyre (Feb.2010) and its astonishing ability to collect and entrap more plastic scum than plankton in its famous ‘Garbage Patch’. It is a deathground for any remaining wildlife foolhardy enough to enter it. It’s the size of Texas. And growing.
‘I don’t think we’ll ever find all the toys,” says Dr Curtis Ebbermeyer, whose enthusiastic beachcombing enterprise specializes in the Pacific Northwest. ‘But we’ve discovered invaluable information about the nature of the (N.Pacific) Gyre.’ He described finding three (Spanish) glass fishing floats, c.1960, which had done eight circuits. In a 1950s experiment Canadian oceanographers threw 33,869 message-in-bottles (MIBs) in 12-oz brown glass beer bottles into the Gulf of Alaska.
Albatross chick on Midway Island --neighbor to Garbage Patch-- died of starvation: fed by parent birds till it choked; photo courtesy Chris Jordan & The Guardian
PNW oceanographer Ebbesmeyer says: “So far we’re aware of about 3%. The story pleases and fascinates people, but what it shows is something terrible — awful.”
British adventurer and explorer David de Rothschild focused attention on the proliferation of plastic in the vortex of the Gyre by sailing his 60-ft plastic catamaran, Plastiki, made from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles, through the Garbage Patch between San Francisco and Sydney in summer 2010.
Hohn has also travelled the world’s oceans — by steamer, container ship, icebreaker and ferry — to follow the routes taken by the duckies. What he found was something less than a fairy story.
“Most worrying are the increased levels of plastic compared with plankton in the ocean. It enters the sea via waterways all over the world. Fishing gear, plastic bags come down rivers and streams. It gets eaten by sea birds, fish and whales. Nothing can digest it.”
Over time it breaks down into particles that spread through the water column like liquid dust that travels all round the world. Scientists have issued recent warnings that the oceans’ ‘plastic level’ has significantly increased.
Trapped in Arctic ice, toys are then released to continue their journey when the ice melts
“Plastic is landing on our shores by the ton. There is measurable impact on marine mammals that get entangled, as well as sea turtles and birds that eat the stuff. Once this poison reaches the food chain it is a worry for human beings. We are putting plastic on the dinner plates of our grandchildren.” Donovan Hohn, author/researcher, February 2012
Combined with the Seattle beachcomber finds and the Canadian MIB results, scientists now have a new working model of earth’s ocean currents. They see submarine storms not as rivers; more as ocean-weather. The forecast’s not looking good.
‘There is no doubt that plastic is creeping into the food chain. That is a definite reality. We’ve got to get past this “out-of-sight out-of-mind” mentality.’
‘That’s what the ducks teach us.’ Curtis Ebbesmeyer
“It’s a story that’s wonderful-awful,” he says. “Trash travels all round the planet through the ocean; we know that. People think they throw stuff away. There is no away. It’s all in the ocean.”
The very deep did rot: O God!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea. Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner
We're all in the same bathtub...
Part of me feels I should apologize for the ferocity of this article: compared with my usual Siderealview, where the material is often immanent, this one also has urgency. I am aware, too, that I am laying this story at the door of the already enlightened: the huge majority who shop/drop plastic bags are unlikely to bend an ear to this blog. But occasionally it doesn’t hurt to press a point.
Some of us live in the expectation that our next car will be rechargeable; our next vegetable seed purchase or market stall fruit will NOT be pesticide-sprayed or triple-plastic wrapped; our electricity bill used to help upgrade the supplier’s power source to solar/windpower. But we also live in the reality that few of our friends live ‘off-the-grid’, except in rare locations.
Some of us have even taken the proactive route in questioning suppliers on their integrity.*
Ancient Mariner's shipmates made him wear the dead albatross round his neck in penance for their change of fortune
Or we might, as Coleridge felt when he wrote his supernatural Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1796, see the sharp decline in numbers of albatross as our fault. We might, like the old man, feel we should hang our heads in shame, wear a virtual albatross around our necks until the curse is lifted. After all, it’s not our fault big business is so careless about what it dumps at sea.
But, just as Coleridge’s audience believed that to wear the carcasse of the dead bird was justified for his killing the omen of good fortune, that Regency/Victorian patriarchal view still lingers in our attitude to pollution: so long as we do a minimum recycle, somebody else will pay the price for world pollution.
After all, what can a single person do? Is it realistic to expect the combustion engine to become a dinosaur overnight?
Eco-warrior, sailor and philanthropist, David de Rothschild navigated 'Plastiki' via Heyerdahl's 'Kontiki' route through the Pacific plastic Trash Vortex, in 2010
“What I hope that the Plastiki does and what we stand for is not about vilifying people, pointing fingers or just articulating problems. We are about challenging that thinking.” David de Rothschild, eco-explorer Plastiki crew-member
In all honesty, bar another Pacific meltdown, how many of us will stop using plastic tomorrow? How many of us will refuse to shop in supermarkets until they stop plastic proliferation?
But how else shall we bring about a change in what is already an urgent situation?
Remarkably there are some brave souls out there. de Rothschild is presently putting his not inconsiderable fortune and Plastiki weight behind a British initiative to have plastic bags banned in British supermarkets.
Since Devon residents of Modbury voted in 2007 to make their town plastic-free, fifty more towns and villages in Britain have joined the anti-plastic bandwagon.
Ocean Defenders campaign, with Greenpeace, created this graphic display on a NPacific Gyre island, words in golfballs
It is sometimes difficult for our American bros/sisters to comprehend how, for a small island (Britain in total: England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland together equal the approximate area of Oregon), British bureaucracy moves so slowly. The familiar US supermarket checkout adage ‘paper or plastic?’ has no meaning in the British Isles because supermarkets here never conceived that alternative checkout wraps such as recyclable paper from sustainable forests might actually give them a better image. One chain* actually pursued outdated reasoning that their “customers didn’t want that” (paper alternative). Unlike progressive states such as New Mexico, Massachusetts, Arizona, Oregon and California, Britain has almost no awareness of the multiple friendly uses of cotton, corn, rafia and hemp. ‘Alternatives’ offered for sale as ‘recyclable’ shopping bags by some chains have plastic constituents.
Eurozone parliamentary intiatives are underway to ‘reduce’ plastic consumption (sic) by 2025 or 2030. But by then, at the rate Time is speeding up, it may be too late. It may already be too late for the albatross, the blue whale, the dolphin and the Green Turtle.
One of five crop circles in Tlapanaloya, Hidalgo, Mexico last weekend
In the last few years the eyes of the world have been fixed on Crop Circles in the (Northern hemisphere) summer months. The eyes of the world are elsewhere at the moment. So it is not surprising that five crop circles which appeared over last weekend’s Vernal Equinox in two oat fields in Tlapanaloya, 33 miles north of Mexico City were given little media attention. Reuters, the Washington Post and Mexico’s El Universal seemed to be the only news media interested in the phenomenon. They are the first new appearances since the January surprise in Java.
TLAPANALOYA is the old name for this fertile farming region, still tilled and irrigated along indigenous/traditional lines and miraculously spared in Mexico’s headlong drive for industrial ‘revolution’. In its new guise as Tepeji del Rio de Ocampo, Hidalgo, Mexico, it is surrounded by industrial development: several hydro dams, effluent canals, a bauxite-cement works at Cruz Azul, a large military installation, several multi-lane highways (autopista), a national rail line and access roads to feed nationally-supported mineral extraction and mining operations to north and west.
Tlapanaloya lies at latitude 19º52’ N longitude 99º21’W.
Mexican Cordillera L to R: Iztaccíhuatl, Popocatepétl, volcano Malinche, Cofre de Perote and Citlaltépetl
Latitude 19º is significant as the Parallel along which the southern boundary of the North American tectonic plate meets with the Central American plate. Here a line of volcanoes rising to 16,000 feet –the Cordillera de Mexico (or Neovolcanic Ridge)– stretches from the Revillagigedo Islands in the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Seismic activity is frequent here, and the valley is considered an earthquake-prone zone.
Located thirty-three miles north of central Mexico City, Tlapanaloya lies within the closed basin of the ancient Valley of Mexico. At around 7,000 feet, it was the original picturesque Lake District of five lakes, and domain of the people of Teotihuacan, the Toltec and Aztec. The Toltec and Aztec spoke Nahuatl.
The Nahuatl name for the Valley of Mexico was the Anahuac, meaning the plateau or ‘place between the waters’.
Now those waters are crying out for help.
There were originally five great lakes in this stunningly beautiful setting, hemmed in on all sides by mountain peaks that rise to 16,000 feet. But in the last 200 years successive dams and reservoir construction schemes have funneled and tunneled the waters away from their traditional lakebeds and aquifers. Their clear streams were instead diverted to become waste carriers: ‘effluent’–glorified drains for the population of megalopolis Mexico City–now bursting at the seams with a central population in excess of nine million souls (2010 census 8,851,080, see MCMA, below).
Image of Eagle on Cactus in miraculous growth from Stone: Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the Mendoza codex
Mexico City’s ancient name was Mexico-Tenochtitlan after the Nahua-Aztec tribe, Mexica: it means the ‘co-‘ ‘place of the Mexica among stone cactuses’. In symbolic terms, the image (represented in Mexico’s coat-of-arms and flag) is one of an eagle perched on a cactus which grew from a stone (supreme achievement through the greatest of adversity in environment)
The Rio Tula–the Tula River, from which the nearby industrial town of Tula Allende takes its name–is, according to Mexico’s National Water Commission [Comisión Nacional del Agua de México], one of the most polluted rivers in the country. Tula (Tollan) was the Toltec capital, Tollan-Xicocotitlan in its heyday–AD8th-10thCC (Post-Classic period)*–but suffered brutally under Spanish invasions of 16thC, when its society collapsed.
The Toltec called their capital Tollan, surrounded by natural wetlands–a fertile gift from their Sun-and-star god Quetzalcoatl–Xicocotitlan, the ‘place among the reeds near the home of the wasp/bee’.
The Atlanteans of Tula Grande, basalt figures over 12feet high carved from volcanic rock guard the Toltec Tollan temple to Quetzalcoatl (AD10th-12thCC)
The great Atlantean statues which guarded the temple of serpent-god/Venus-morning-star-Queztalcoatl, prior to Tollan‘s destruction by the Spanish, have been reinstated to stand on their original plinths, rescued from the ignominious ditch where they were found buried–hidden by retreating Toltec from Spanish gaze.
Today Tula and Tlapanaloya reflect Toltec civilization in name only. And even that has changed. Tlapanaloya is now called Tepeji del Rio de Ocampo and Tula is Tula Grande or Tula Allende– a far cry from its original endearing Toltec-Oromi name: Tollan-Xicocotitlan: ‘place of the bumble-bee.’ Implication is that bees flourished in a rich hinterland where agriculture, flowers, and fruit trees blossomed. Much has changed since their culture died.
Popocátepetl, Aztec 'smoking mountain' stands at 17,802feet 33miles S of Mexico City
Coincidentally, 33miles SE of Mexico City stands the stratovolcano Popocatépetl. At 17,802 feet, its massif is also contained within the 19th parallel and its location is within one degree of longitude of the Tlapanaloya crop circles–at 19°1’24″N 98°37’20″W. It erupted last year (2010) and its present rumblings are ongoing. Its eruptions were recorded in Aztec codices and its legendary lahars and pyroclastic flows (mud and ash slides) are seen as a constant threat to Mexico City in modern times–since the city’s massive sprawl has gradually spread into the volcano’s sphere of influence.
FIVE LAKES: how many remain?
Although originally flowing through the wide Tula Valley, which could accommodate its wild seasonal fluctuations, the river was guided by an ingenious 17thC drainage system, itself a replacement for indigenous waterworks built with native stone, which for the previous 500 years supplied the local population with much-needed water in the dry season. The Tula works simultaneously provided essential water for agriculture (as the ancestors had done) and allowed excess floodwaters in the rainy season to channel from the Basin of Mexico into the Gulf. Now–thanks to gigantic 19thC dams and, more damaging to culture and ecosystems, massive bureaucratically-driven hydro-related and industrial concrete construction from 1930s onwards, the Tula River is catchment for what is left of the rivers of the Valley of Mexico basin which originally tumbled out of the five lakes: Texcoco, Chalco, Xochimilco, Xaltocan and Zumpango.
Five Great Lakes of (15thC) Valley of Mexico: only one remains and it is dammed
Tula River is part of the Pánuco Hydrologic Region, which has a long history of exploitation for its fresh artesian ground-water. The Tula itself feeds into the Rio Moctezuma which empties into the Pánuco, one mile outside the industrial ports of Tampico/Altamira and Cuidad Madero on the Gulf Coast. Altamira has major industry-standard docks for container-vessel traffic. It is no longer known for its (previous reputation as a) bird sanctuary. Tourist traffic is usually carefully diverted south to the coastal resorts of Vera Cruz or the Yucatan peninsula.
According to data from the National Water Commission of Mexico, the Tula is one of the most polluted rivers in the country. It ‘generates 409.42 million cubic meters of “wastewater” annually.’ Tula River’s pollution stems from this stream’s manmade adaptation as a channel for solid (untreated) human waste along with industrial effluent from both the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA, sic), and the ‘industrial zones’ around Tula de Allende.
Lake Texcoco was described in 15thC historical records as a huge natural reservoir–a ‘visual masterpiece’ of mountain-fed streams, wildlife-filled marshes and brackish pools. It was home to the Pelican. Agriculturally-adept and innovative, the native Indios harvested salt from the saltlakes and dammed the ‘sweet-water’ lakes for use in their agricultural terraces (traditional Chinampa ‘gardens’ or small fields). Aztec tradition records that the northern lakes were inaccessible by canoe during the dry season between October and May. When the (summer) rainy season came, Texcoco was known to ‘join up’ with its four sister lakes and canoes were again able to navigate within the lake system.
Lake Texcoco is now dry. The other lakes have gone.
Zumpango Lake (Nahuatl=Tzompantli), the northernmost of the historical lakes in the main basin of the Valley of Mexico, between the towns of Zumpango and Teoloyucan, is the only body of water left of the original five. It lies within 12 miles of the five Equinoctial crop circle formations. It is a manmade version of the original whose boundaries were formed when a canal begun in 1605 started the process of drainage in the Valley, North into the Tula River. It is still home to the 10-meter-deep canyon, the sewage-laden Gran Canal. The original lake has been drained. Only the canal and west drainage tunnel system remain.
Zumpango reservoir has suffered a gradual process of degradation by the presence of industrial operations on its shores and the influx of sewage from Mexico City. The ‘West Issuer’ tunnel, which was originally used exclusively for stormwater drainage, now transports wastewater with a high heavy metal content while increasing tonnage of human waste is discharged into Presa tributaries. Currently, state and local government officially designate it a ‘Water Sanctuary’, but there are no active conservation plans to maintain its high ecological value in the Basin for numerous migratory bird species that take refuge in its waters.
Pelican persevere here. But pollution continues by the local population, compounded by motorized tourism (aquaplaning, outboard motors), and water verges are not maintained. Motor boats disturb avian habitat. Few tourists shown the neighboring solid waste effluent make return visits. At this rate, it is a matter of time before both birds and visitors will have no refuge here.
Formerly part of five legendary lakes that made the Valley beautiful, the name Zumpango is also derived from the Nahuatl meaning ‘the place of the row of skulls’. It was a place of sacred prayer and reverence for the Ancestors. That, too, has gone.
Tourist trajineras on the canals of former lake Xochimilco
The remaining three lakes were drained by settlers from the time of Spanish Conquest, accelerated by subsequent labor, military and government initiatives. The old lakebeds are now almost entirely covered by urban development. One remnant canal at (former Lake) Xochimilco is maintained as a tourist attraction where visitors tour in trajineras (gondolas).
The axolotl, a rare salamander endemic to Lake Chalco, moved house when that Lake was drained, to take up fragile residence near the Canals of its neighboring ‘Lake’ Xochimilco, It is now considered a ‘critically endangered species’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Otherwise, the historic Lake Region is now without lakes.
A whole settlement flooded by the Army in 1931 to form Presa Taxhimay
Tlapanoloya is itself ringed by further waterworks–all artificial. They are called Presas=reservoir, dam.
Presa Escondida at the southern end of the Requena Reservoir, is a small dam 3km N of Tlapanaloya; the Presa Requena Tepeji itself, within the town limits, is a reservoir still frequented by wildlife, including pelican; the Presa Escondida, a dam to the west, is polluted and has no wildlife whatsoever; the Presa Encinillas 5miles distant at Jagüeyes is skirted by six-lane Highway 57 at a busy intersection. It no longer attracts fowl and is polluted by industrial effluent from the Cruz Azul plant. It seems ironic that Highway 57 headed 100 miles NW brings pilgrims to the tiny rancho Chahin at Tlacote near Querétaro. There Señor Jesus Chahin gives away samples of spring water from his own ‘miracle’ well, an artesian supply of unrivalled purity believed to cure all ills.
Back in Tlapanaloya, the largest dam, Presa Taxhimay, formerly Laguna Taxhimay, three miles south of town, is the largest man-made Presa of them all. It was flooded by design in 1931 on the order of General Manuel Avila Camacho. In so doing he completely annihilated the Post-classic, colonial and Spanish settlements of Hacienda Catarina and San Luis Rey, whose church towers remain above the waters of Taxhimay dam surface.
Tlapanaloya Crop Circles in Chinampa ‘Gardens’
Farmer Enrique Hernandez in one of 5 crop circles in his oats in Tlapanaloya
Fortuitously, all five of last weekend’s crop circles appeared in oat meadows still farmed in the Chinampa style–planted and lovingly tended in traditional small rectangular-shaped fields by local Tlapanaloya farmer Enrique Hernandez. He was reported to be mystified by their choice of location but delighted that his crop was not spoiled. On the other hand, if he had been assured that his own way of life and his organically-grown porridge oats–now with their hugely enhanced CC/ET-vibration–were teetering on the edge of extinction, he might feel proud.
It is becoming clear that–whatever one feels about the provenance of crop circles the world over–they do occur in locations which require our attention.
Given that the Tlapanaloya crop circles did NOT contain elaborate interior designs–as are now commonplace in sophisticated annual formations on Salisbury Plain and the fields of Wiltshire’s electromagnetic aquifer–it seems a simple intuitive leap from the five Mexican crop circles to a crisis water situation, symbolized by the five extinct Great Lakes of the Basin of Mexico–along with their important historical contribution to this crucial aquifer.
They also occur as part of a triangle of 33: Their point is 33miles N of Mexico City. Also 33 miles NE of the city lies Teotihuacan, where equinox is seriously celebrated each year. And Teotihuacan lies approx.33 miles E of Tlapanaloya.
Equinox sunset over the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Valley of Mexico, March 20, 2011
The crop circles appeared on Equinox weekend when hundreds of thousands of Mexico City residents head for the pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan–to pay their respects to the setting sun as it disappears behind the pyramid. Teotihuacan, Toltec ‘place where men become gods’ lies just 33miles east of Enrique’s field. Its central avenue’s due N-S alignment, on which the pyramid’s shadow casts a precise shadow at the moment of dusk, remains today a fascination for Mexicans who traditionally celebrate the onset of spring on Equinox. This year was no exception. Teotihuacan was mobbed.
It was also the weekend before the world-wide celebration of World Water Day, March 22nd.
Water is becoming scarce in many countries with over-population and rising mean annual temperatures. Water will soon be a commodity more precious than the metals mined in the Mexican hinterland.
The present explosion of shanty towns — barrios — which have sprung up in the last decade around the Mexican megacity have bolstered the population of MCMA (see above) to 21 milion people. While canals and drainage systems channel their human waste North into the Valley of Mexico agricultural region centered on (the crop circles of) Tlapanaloya, a clean drinkable water supply continues to be a problem in the city.
Industrial growth within an enclosed basin has not only produced pollutants in smog, but water quality issues for the Valley. Over-extraction of ground water has caused new flooding problems for the city as it sinks below the historic lake floor. Seasonal flooding was thought to have been historically ‘cured’ by the Spanish and successive Mexican governments by the very act of drainage. Now excessive drainage–and extraction of more water than is being replenished naturally causes subsidence and the need for further infrastructure–more pipes and tunnels.
For a high mesa totally enclosed within mountain ranges, the Valley is completely dependent on its groundwater supply. This has traditionally come from the underlying aquifers, the upwelling of seasonal springs supplemented by (previously unwanted) flooding and rains. These underground springs and wells are now almost exclusively the source of drinking water for the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City. With the rapid addition of shanty barrios around the city’s outer limits, more water is being pumped out of the city’s underground reservoirs than Nature is pouring in–[main aquifer currently pumps 880,000 USgallons/minute while the water table refreshes at around 440,000 gals/min]–that is, water is replenishing at around half the extraction rate.
Much of the city has now sunk below the ancient lakebed level and it continues to sink at around 15 inches per year. Water from the surrounding mountains which always flowed towards the city, now passes through shanty towns where there are no city ‘services’ (water supply or sewage removal), so the rivers become sewers–which contribute to an ongoing health risk in the capital. MCMA is struggling to prevent this contaminated water from entering the drinking supply.
The present dilemma is specific to Mexico. But in the West, clean and clear water is a blessing and a gift we may not have appreciated enough until now.
All this communicated by a chance appearance in two traditionally-planted-and-irrigated Chinampa fields in a rural district of central Mexico? you ask?
Perhaps not explicitly, but we have had a little experience of messages transmitted in the last decade of crop circles in other areas of the world where aquifers–and their underlying electromagnetic mysteries–have contributed enormously to the medium.
This Mexican Wave may indeed be sending us a High Five: a reminder to reconnect with our traditional lifestyles. But it is more likely to be a distress signal–a wakeup call.
‘Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind”
Louis Pasteur 1854
Crop circle codes of light
Last weekend, as I joined in giving thanks for our earthly blessings, an autumnal appreciation of Crop Circles, themselves the epitome of high summer warmth and abundance, seemed right. If, like me, you are adjusting to the onset of winter, shortening days, dwindling light, you might be tempted to regret that, at the height of summer, we didn’t feel more appreciation for the phenomenon. Once more I allowed the beauty of their designs to imprint on my subconscious and, as many others have done, asked myself why here, why now? So this is my second blog at a time of entering into hibernation, because we occasionally need a double dose of joy to get us through hard times.
As a catalyst for change, their imprint on harvest field and human consciousness is gaining ground and their messages of joy, beauty, grace (as well as mathematics, geometry, astronomy, enough science to boggle the most ardent geek) have been hitting us squarely between the eyes: 10,000 messages in 29 countries in the last decade. Along with spiritual feelings generated in visitors within the circles themselves, those messages are having an impact on us, the human race: feelings appropriate to this particular season: like peace and goodwill to our fellow man. How clever of them to be able to combine both physical and spiritual. And to do it in such a miraculously short time.
Helicopter and microlite pilots have attested to crop circles appearing in the Wiltshire countryside in a 15-minute timespan between one flyover and the next. Overnight campers trying their best to stay awake to ‘catch them at it’ have either dozed off at the crucial moment or seen the tail end of a luminous glow disappear over the horizon, leaving a trail of beauty blazed in the corn.
Crop scientists agree, stalks of barley and wheat show effects of intense heat similar to microwave or laser energy which can make a stem node pop or a stalk bend and lie flat without breaking, all the while being manipulated into a stunning swirling pattern akin to weaving or cosmic basketry. Monitored examples so far have registered minute alterations in cellular structure, fluctuating background radiation and depletion of the local water table, but crops continue to grow to maturity and harvest with no negative impact. In fact recent research is beginning to believe a quick dose of light radiation and an altered energy field actually improve crop yield.
Known side-effects, seen by the scientific establishment as an increase in electromagnetic energy and altered soil chemisry, produce on-the-ground human biological emotions such as brotherly love, increased camaraderie, and an inclination to share with others; add to that the agricultural bonus of stronger wheat, more robust barley, increased yield, and the fact that these crops are increasingly being consumed by us in our bread, malt, beer and pastries, would it not follow that we too are being affected? To take the concept even farther; might we find through the gifts left in these complex manifested forms a way to feed the world’s starving masses?
In recent years the beauty of crop circle art, alone, has succeeded in affecting us as a collective. That in itself is remarkable. Through the immediacy of the internet and with huge advances in video technology, visitor numbers have escalated beyond local belief, air traffic and ‘sky tours’ have doubled and website ‘hits’ on the phenomenon number over one million.
There are few left unaware or untouched by them. People in all countries – even the most inured city-dweller – and followers on all continents, whether or not they have experienced them first hand, are writing and blogging about them. I for one have visited only one, but that’s the beauty of their effect: the photographic record has nearly as much impact on us as the creations themselves.
While some communications media continue to postulate their formation by humans, most of us who’ve been following their process of revelation are aware now that something else is going on.
They are making us look to the stars. Our place of origin, according to all major world religions, astrophysicists, philosophers, a multitude of alternate faiths, and a huge body of ancient knowledge.
‘He made his Progeny of an extract of Water held in Light estimation’
Q’uran The Koran
Why, if not to guide our fumbling consciousness in a new direction, would we be given a steadily increasing stream of tantalizing coded information, created in seconds, coming from what appears to be the Realm of Light?
Sextant Crop Circle at Alton Barnes Phase I June 21, 2009
It’s not just a physical reaction; it’s emotional, psychic, spiritual and other-dimensional as well. We are being drawn out of our three-to-four dimensional planes and becoming familiar with concepts, taught by all the great spiritual doctrines, that there are several other realities than the one we see.
Suddenly our Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy becomes an open door to the Universe and is teaching us to think out of the box, to look beyond.
Take the Sextant Crop Circle for instance: After its preliminary formation on midsummer night 2009 in a field at Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, it took two successive nights to complete. And it brought reaction from three different schools of thought:
Coronal mass ejection predicted in 'jellyfish' crop circle
The Astronomical community suggested its initial phase mirrored the inner solar system, predicting (like the ‘jellyfish’ crop circle) a solar coronal mass ejection (CME) for a date three weeks in the future. Phase two appeared to give universal values and positions for the inner planets confirming that date and time; and phase three, although a trickier concept, as it appeared to be in ‘code’, a mixture of ASCII and hieroglyphs which were yet to be revealed!
The Mathematics community, including our dear-departed gurus Sagan and Hawkins (my last blog) are insistent that much crop circle symmetry and form resembles the perfection of number and the exquisite harmony of music:
‘As the expression of number in space, geometry is inextricably linked to music since the laws of the former govern the mathematical intervals that make up the notes in the western music scale – the diatonic ratios – hence the reason ancient Egyptians referred to geometry as frozen music.’
There is a physical connection, too, between matter and sound, as sound waves will create geometric patterns in sand, iron filings, any flexible medium. Navajo and Hopi traditions relate how shamans in ancient times would utter words on to sand to create sacred patterns. Music soothes the fevered mind; it coaxes plants into growth (Secret Life of Plants, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird).
Sextant crop circle phase 2 appeared June 23 2009
Echoed in all the world’s faiths and traditions is the concept that Universal matter was created by sound: Hindu Mandalas are created in the vibration of God; Islam expresses God as a sacred geometric image; in the Christian tradition, medieval geometry produced miraculous structures like the Gothic cathedral whose hallowed arches resonated with song and chant. And
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God St. John
Phase 3 Sextant crop circle Alton Barnes June 30, 2009 with coded tail
The third response is from an individual, but is, I believe, the most revealing of the three: Judy Beebe has been a medical scientist for 35 years, and on her spiritual path since she was nine years old. Through a series of life-changing experiences, some of them OBEs, she has created what she calls a Language of Light, which she itemizes and demonstrates lucidly to be a Univesal code which is embedded in the crop circles.
She fervently believes Mankind has reached a point where we are now listening:
– to our own ‘Spirit within’,
– to messages sent from our Universal Matrix to remind us of our sacred potential, and
– to our own forgotten memories of who we were before we incarnated on this planet. She is convinced that water carries the matrix of our future.
Her information is carefully and lovingly documented and her website is a work of art in itself. She also – like the crop scientists measuring growth rates and changing cell structure – thinks we are being directed towards new simpler technologies which we have only to use our God-given intelligence to figure out and implement. In her view, the 2008 Crop Circle season was about ‘energy’; the 2009 season about ‘water’. Man’s way forward is to develop our next source of energy from the water molecule: what she calls Omega Cell or GEM energy.
Judy Beebe's concept of phase 3 Alton Barnes 'sextant' crop circle with tail
For her, the ‘Sextant’ crop circle phase one clearly gives the GEM energy formula, along with instruction in how to activate the energy matrix which we need as a species to develop our ‘understanding heart’ and to ascend in consciousness. Phase two shows the matrix opened up and the activation of ‘watery fire’ or power from the constituent elements of water – oxygen and hydrogen. Phase three shows energy at our fingertips to power the world; she says energy from water is our destiny. To her, the phase three tail of code, like the swallow crop circle with coded tail which appeared the same week at Stanton St. Bernard (June 27, 2009) is a flow of rippling water energy.
Her work has matured over several years and her evidence is clear and beguiling. It is a masterpiece, with directions to reach the Master Key, and well worth taking time to study.
Gradually, as we work our chilly way moment by moment towards winter solstice, the time of earthly endings and solar standstill, we are being shown miracles in nature along with human ideas which have sparked from them. In contemplating designs devised by laser consciousness, we are also being given a razor-sharp view of an alternate reality. I believe we are being drawn closer to our destiny, and. like the return of the light after solstice, our new beginnings are around the corner.
View from the Stars: whichever way you look at it, we are present in Sidereal time, Space is our growth medium, and stardust and water our constituent particles. When electromagnetically charged, our solar-powered circuitry is capable of Creating Anything We Choose.
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