2007 Ground Water Summit

Wednesday, May 2, 2007 : 2:20 p.m.

Privately Confined Ground Water Management with Porosity Storage Reservoirs

Paul Ivancie, JR Engineering Ltd. and Stan Peters, P.E., PS Systems Inc.

A new method of water storage has been approved for use in Colorado by the State Engineer’s Office, with their recently published administrative guidelines.   These reservoirs can be constructed with soil-bentonite slurry walls in alluvial deposits less than 150 feet deep, utilize traditional well technology to store and extract water, and incorporate exterior groundwater mitigation systems to prevent impacts to the surrounding area. Porosity storage reservoirs offer unique advantages over traditional open water storage reservoirs and un-confined groundwater recharge and recovery.  These vessels allow the existing or future uses of the land surface, have no evaporative losses or no adverse floodplain affects, can be build quickly where mining would never be allowed for future reclamation into open water storage, and typically don’t require an EIS.  Advantages over groundwater storage in un-confined aquifers include dominion and control of the stored water with fairly simple accounting procedures, less stringent water quality issues for recharging, less groundwater modeling, and no impacts to the surrounding community during withdraw.  Geophysical techniques are utilized for designing injection-extraction wells and predicting subsidence.

Paul Ivancie, JR Engineering Ltd. Paul G. Ivancie, C.P.G. received a B.A. from the University of Colorado in geology and environmental science with postgraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a project manager for the water resource group at JR Engineering, LLC in Greenwood Village, Colorado. His work focuses mainly in the areas of surface and groundwater development with emphasis in well construction and water rights for the past 10 years. Mr. Ivancie formerly worked as a development and exploration petroleum geologist in the onshore/offshore Gulf of Mexico province.

Stan Peters, P.E., PS Systems Inc. Professional engineer with twenty years of experience. BSCE and MCSE (structural & geotechnical) from Colorado State University, MBA and MS-Finance from University of Colorado at Denver


The 2007 Ground Water Summit