Primary Water Research

Demonstration Sites and Laboratory Research

By Marianna King

[email protected]
June 2014

Summary

Conventional hydrology speaks of a static supply of water created once early in the
Earth’s history constantly being recycled. However, the work of Stephan Riess and
others has demonstrated that another source of water, called primary or magmatic water,
is generated within the Earth’s magma. It flows vertically from beneath the surface,
adding to the hydrologic cycle.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey: “The water cycle describes the existence and
movement of water on, in, and above the Earth. Where does all the Earth’s water come
from? Primordial Earth was an incandescent globe made from magma, but all magmas
contain water. Water set free by magma began to cool down the Earth’s atmosphere until
it could stay on the surface as a liquid. Volcanic activity kept and still keeps introducing
water in the atmosphere, thus increasing the surface-an-ground-water volume of the
Earth.”

Primary water is perpetual water. (Arnold, 1960: 5; Burridge, 1954: 21) Unlike
conventional aquifers, primary water sources likely will continue to yield water
continuously over very long periods of time regardless of climatic conditions. Its springs
have been flowing for thousands of years and have not fluctuated over long periods of
time (Arnold: 1960: 4). Most primary water is pure and does not have to be treated with
harmful substances in order to become useful for domestic and agricultural purposes.
(Arnold, 1960: 5)

Primary water wells have been accessed in Africa, Central America, the Middle East and
North America for many years. In these areas primary water wells consistently have
demonstrated their ability to transform farms and local communities and economies.

Since the 1930s, Stephen Riess, a hydro-geologist and metallurgist, drilled hundreds of
primary water wells in the United States, Mexico, the Middle East and Africa, which
continue to provide water for communities. In 1959 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion of
Israel invited Riess to find water for the new city of Eilat in the Negev Desert. Riess
struck water at a depth of just over 700 feet through solid granite, producing enough
water to supply a city of 100,000 people.
In East Africa in 2007 a project called Maji Mengi (Abundant Water) was established to
bring clean, safe water to villages suffering extreme water scarcity. Over 82 successful
wells have been completed, serving thousands of families. The deep-seated water is
bacteria-free and continues to flow throughout the year, even in times of drought.

Pal Pauer, a student of Stephen Riess, has accessed substantial number of primary water
wells on several continents. He has maintained about a 92 percent success rate in
locating and accessing primary water wells. Most recently, he has drilled over 50 wells
in Kenya and Tanzania that produce between 1,800 and 3,000 gallons of water per hour.
One well supplies water to 15,000 people and costs each person less than $30 a year.

Applied Research and Demonstration Sites

“Academic support for the existence and accessibility of primary water comes from
metallurgists, petrologists, mining geologists and desert rats who know good and well
that some spring waters did not originate in the atmosphere.” (Rooke, 1954: 28)

Leonard da Vinci, in his famous “Treatise on Water,” championed the idea that water
comes both from precipitation and from internally generated sources.

In 1896 Adolf Nordenskjold, a Stockholm professor of mineralogy, published an essay,

“About Drilling for Water in Primary Rocks,” which won him a nomination for the Nobel
Prize in physics in 1901, though he died before the prize was actually awarded. His
research supported the idea that a new type of water was available, potable fresh water
that is distinctly independent of the hydrological cycles of atmosphere water. He called
this water “primary” because of its association with so-called ”primary rocks,” which
geologists term magmatic, or those such as granites, basalts and rhyolites, which derive
from the molten magma deep within the Earth and later cool to crystallize into igneous
rocks. He affirmed that one could sink wells capable of producing such “primary water”
year-round along the northern and southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea and the whole
of Asia Minor, the best-known part of the world afflicted with aridity.

Shortly after the appearance of Nordenskjold’s essay, his ideas about water newly formed
in the Earth were echoed by a renowned German geologist, Edward Suess. Speaking
with special reference to the thermal springs at Karolvy Vary, in the former
Czechoslovakia, he made persuasive arguments to show that waters in this class issue
from deep within the Earth, from the fundamental magma itself.

Suess’ contribution was noted by Frank Wiggleworth Clarks, a geologist with the U. S.
Geological Survey, who wrote that one of the most important questions for geology was
whether it is possible to discriinate between terrestrial water and magmatic water.

Dr. Seuss’ Bavarian student and protégé, Dr. Stephan Riess, a metallurgist, mining
engineer and geologist, repeatedly demonstrated the existence and availability of primary
water. He emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1930s where he continued to find abundantly

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producing primary water wells for farmers, homeowners, communities and corporations.
His applied research shows that primary water is generated in the rock strata when the
right temperature and pressure are present. This water is then forced into fractures and
fissures in the rock where it transverses over hundreds of miles. He saw new additions of
water flowing vertically, from beneath the surface, adding to the hydrologic cycle. This
water, in turn, becomes bound up on the surface, partially in plants, sediments and
subduction zones on its way back out the Earth’s mantle.

The Riess method uses mineralogy, petrology and structural geology precisely to locate
high pressure/low temperature hydrothermal systems that have been encountered
previously by engineers in mine and tunnel flooding incidents. (Fourlay,2007: 4).
The Riess Institute at its Totten Field Laboratory, over the last decade, has drilled,
collected and tested waters captured from great depths in a number of bore holes. Totten
well 3, at 2,000 meters, indicates that some waters are not part of the hydrologic cycle, or
rather from deep-seated geologic interaction within the Earth’s interior

Several active Riess wells today are in Escondido, California and Cottonwood, Idaho.
Several wells were located in the late 1970s on private property in Escondido. These
wells are in operation today. The City of Cottonwood was running out of water and
turned to Riess, who located three wells for them, one producing 600 liters per minutes
and the others 1,200 liters per minute. All the wells continue to supply water today.

Stephan Riess, Bill Cox and Verne Cameron drilled many primary water wells that
produced over 2,000 gallons per minute. Over 50 wells have been created in the Owens
Valley in the middle of the California desert. Some of these wells, drilled in hard desert
rock, generate 8,000 liters per minute. (FN Conversation with Pal Pauer, March 15,
2013).

The seminal research and work of Dr. Reiss is carried on, among others, by geo-
hydrologist Pal Pauer, who is the world’s foremost authority on locating and accessing
primary water. He carries on the work of locating, drilling and accessing the plentiful
availability of earth-generated primary water. Pal has located boreholes in the United
States and Africa and currently is working on a project in the Marshall Islands.

Laboratory Studies

The existence of primary water also is supported by other recent research. In 2002
Japanese researchers concluded that there might be more water deep underground than in
all oceans, lakes and rivers combined. The scientists first heated “mineral cocktails” to a
white-hot 2,900 degrees F. and squeezed them until the pressure reached more than three
million pounds per square inch. These experiments, which replicated the environment
and conditions deep in the earth, produced water. The researchers concluded that the
water produced within the earth is as plentiful as water from the oceans.
(Gourlay, 2007: 1-2. For more information, see
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03_0307_waterworld.html).
This new water is being made all the time.

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The researchers concluded that this water produced within the earth is as plentiful as
water from the oceans. This conclusion is backed up by the recent discovery of massive
fresh water found under the sea. Vincent Post from Australia’s Flinders University,
found an estimated 120,000,000 cubic miles of low-salinity water buried beneath the
seabed on continental shelves off Australia, Chino, North American and South Africa.
Dr. Post said that by combining information from seafloor water studies done by
scientific or oil and gas exploration purposes, they have “demonstrated that the
freshwater below the seafloor is a common finding, and not some anomaly that only
occurs under very specifical circumstances.” (Agence France Presse, 12/5/13).

In 2006 Dr. Christian Ballhaus and his colleagues of the Mineralogical Institute of the
University of Bonn have concluded that if our planet did not have the ability to store
oxygen in the deep reaches of its mantle there probably would be no life on its surface.
Under close laboratory examination, the researchers subjected the mineral, majorite,
which occurs at a depth of several hundred kilometers, to very high pressures and
temperatures. They demonstrated that under these conditions the mineral stores oxygen
and acts as an oxygen reservoir. Near the earth’s surface the structure breaks down,
releasing oxygen, which then binds with hydrogen from the earth’s interior to form water
(FN Gourlay, 2007: 1). This research was published in Nature,
(doi:10,1038/nature06183. Further information is available at
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/uob-lrf092407.php.)
Dr. Graham Pearson, University of Alberta, Earth of Atmospheric Sciences, found a 1.5
percent water content in Ringwoodite.

In 2012, research by Belousov and Yu relates to coral reefs and magmatic water. This
especially pertains to the Marshall Islands because the islands actually are atolls built by
coral reefs. Their research revealed that volcanic activity at equatorial latitudes creates
the necessary conditions for the formation of the great thickness of the cap rock of coral
reefs, which may be as thick as two kilometers. This causes a rise in temperature in the
depth of the earth’s hyrothermal-magmatic systems. This dynamic’s primary volatile
component is water and the second is carbon dioxide. FN Belousov and Yu: 2012: 1-3

Existing Primary Water Wells

Fifteen years before the publication of his book, Hydrology, Meinzer wrote a long essay
that referred to huge springs in the United States that yield 5,000 gallons or more per
minute. This phenomenon is not confined to the United States. One incredibly
productive water source flowing out of limestone is the Ain Figeh spring that alone
supplies water for over one million residents of Damascus, Syria and is also the principal
source for the Barada River. A report on this spring by the World Bank reads: “The
principal emergence for the spring which has been enclosed in a structure since Roman
times resumes an underground river several meters across which flows up and out of the
limestone formation of the mountain. The total flow has averaged about 132,000 gallons
per minute. The quality if very good, its temperature and pH are relatively constant, its

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taste and color re excellent, and bacterial contamination at the source of practically non-
existent (Cite?)

The Riess Institute raised the question of how does one explain the strange phenomenon
of various and unexplained sources of water throughout the world that produce in excess
of thousands of gallons per minute, often in areas with very little rainfall or in high
attitudes. The following examples are particularly noteworthy.

1. Neftalies in the Sahara. In this region it rains an average of once every three
years. Springs in Neftalies, however, provide enough water to support a forest of
date palms and a population of thousands rendering it a fertile oasis.

2. Jericho in the Jordan Valley. Jericho, the site of the first walled city of antiquity,
was built by a Neolithic people thousands of years ago. Jericho’s spring supports
a city of 24,000 people today. Called “The Sultan’s Spring, it is identical to that
spring “healed” by Elisha, reported in the Holy Bible in II Kings 2: 19-25.

3. A Figeh Spring, Damascus, Syria. This spring supplies water for over one million
residents of Damascus and is also the principal source for the Barada River.

4. Tombstone Silver Mine in Arizona. This huge mine unexpectedly “watered out.”
At the 800-foot level the pumps were raising 2.3 million gallons of water daily.
In 1909 a boiler breakdown had shut down the drainage system and before repairs
could be made the entire complex had been drowned.

5. Mount Whitney, the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range in California. At the 13,000-
foot level on the slopes of Mount Whitney in the Sequoia National Park and well
above all drainage in any direction there is a sheer granite wall with a protrusion
on its face that cups a small lake that remains full and constant even in the dry
summer months. Its water chemistry and temperature point to deep origins. (The
Riess Foundation website. Pages 1–2. Accessed 2/20/13)

Current examples of Riess wells follow.

1. Lakeside, California. Sparkletts Drinker Water was on the brink of disaster

because their water source began to fail in 1955. The President of Sparkletts
heard of Stephan Riess and invited him to find water. Riess found a new well 500
feet lower than the original well. In 1995 the well was measured to be producing
more than 300 gallons per minute of pure high-grade water.

2. Thermal, California. Riess drilled a well into the rocky heights overlooking dry
and barren flatland. The well created a small lake supporting a 450-acre citrus
orchard and has been replenishing the land for over a quarter of a century.

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 3. Camarillo, California. In 1945 learned that a family was about to lose their farm
due to lack of water. Riess punched a well less than 300 feet deep in 4 ½ days,
with a flow of pure water at 700 gallons per minute.

4. Ramona, California. Riess located thee deep wells on a thoroughbred horse farm.
The land was formerly arid and barren but was converted to lush pasturage in the
1970s, creating a multi-million dollar oasis for racehorses.

5. Cottonwood, Idaho. In 1955 the city of Cottonwood was running out of water and
the traditional expert geologists the city had hired to find water concluded that
there was no hope of success. Riess immediately located two wells. The first
generated more than 250 gallons per minute, the second, over 500 gallons per
minute. At the city’s request, Riess came back in 1968 to locate a third well,
which produced over 550 gallons per minute. All three wells continue to supply
Cottonwood today as they did over 25 years ago.

6. Eilat, Israel. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion invited Riess to help find water
for the new city of Eilat in the Negev Desert. In 1959 Riess struck water at a
depth of just over 700 feet through solid granite, producing enough water to
supply a city of 100,000 people.

7. Puebla, Oaxaca and Baja, Mexico. In the late 1940s Riess was invited to come to
Mexico and he found wells in these three Mexican cities that are supplying water
for their inhabitants.

8. Escondido, California. Riess and his successor, Morad, Eghbal, each located
several wells in the late 19970s on private property both for the personal use of
the owner as well as for the commercial water development for surrounding towns
that need to purchase water. These wells are in operation and producing today.

9. Hamilton, Massachusetts. In the early 1980s Riess confirmed well sites and set
up the Totten Field Laboratory. Three wells were drilled into granite and related
structure and are producing more than 350 gallons per minute from fractures
between 200 and 1,600 feet deep. The Hamilton Shear Zone Project at the Totten
Field Laboratory has completed wells drilled beyond 1,000 feet in igneous rock
producing more than 350 gallons per minute. ) (The Riess Foundation website.
Accessed March 2, 2013) Well #3 at the Totten Field Laboratory is an ongoing
project with a 15 inch diameter hole currently drilled to 2,000 meters, known to
be the deepest 10 cm. Cored water research well in the continental U.S. Results
from Totten 3 indicate some waters there may not be part of the hydrologic cycle
but rather from deep-seated geologic interaction within the Earth’s interior
(Gourlay, 2007: 5)

Other existing sites include the following.

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1. Amboseli National Park, Kenya. Pal Pauer drilled a borehole that pump tested at 65
gallons per minute, with no draw down, however that was only because that was the
maximum capacity of the pump used. Also it was only a six-inch borehole. It is possible
that it could have produced 1,0000 gallons or more per hour if it were larger.

2.Villages in Tanzania. Lyn Hebenstreit, a member of Clear Water’s Advisory Board,

has drilled 85 successful boreholes, each of which serves 500 people, in dozens of
villages who otherwise would not have water.

3. Elam Tribal land, Northern California. There are four primary water wells on Elam
land.

Finding and Accessing Primary Water, Research Methods and Technology and
Equipment

Primary water is found in deserts, under lakes and even in mountains (Rooke, April 1954:
28) It is frequently found where there is faulted, igneous and metamorphic rock. A
hydrologist experienced in primary water can tell by the general lay of the land what the
chances are of finding primary water. The procedure has to do with the angles at which
faults and strata lie in relations to one another and to the points of the compass, what the
composition of each is in relation to its neighbor and to themselves in depth. (Burridge,
April 1954: 21).

Geophysical mapping and field observation are the most reliable approaches to primary
water exploration. It occurs frequently where there is fault, igneous and metamorphic
rock. It is often found under granite. Every farm and every community in a region of
crystalline rocks can usually have its own wells.

Recently, with sophisticated airborne geophysical and satellite data groundwater and
primary water can be located in rock using a technique called “fracture trace analysis.”
Large fractures are identified by satellite photography for exploratory drilling. (Gourlay,
2007: 5. An example of this technique can be viewed at
http://ww.eric.com/au/docs.products/assessments/eric_ground_water.pdf.

Primary water can be accessible by drilling boreholes, at times between 50 and 150 feet,
and often 200 to 2,000 feet. Wells are usually less than 1,200 feet deep. (Arnold, 1960: 5)
Stephan Riess’ shallowest well was 232 feet and the deepest was 1,400 feet. In some
situations a hand pump can even be used.

Primary water can be produced locally, thus eliminating long and expensive pipelines and
often storage facilities. It can be developed above the land where it is used and so can be
transported by gravity flow. Because the distribution of primary water is through the
force of gravitation, there is no cost to the user (Arnold, 1960: 4 - 5).

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Some primary water is contaminated by terrestrial water when it reaches the surface. As
Arnold points out: “The relative amount of contamination varies from point to point,…
There is no accurate method of determining the relative amount of primary and terrestrial
water which may be found at any point, nor how deep the penetration of the terrestrial
water will reach. In general, however, further away from sedimentary beds, the primary
water are (sic) located, the less the liability of contamination.” (Arnold, 1960: 4)

Bibliography and References Cited

Agence France Presse. “Scientists Discover Massive Freshwater Reserves Underneath

the Ocean Floor.” Business Insider. www.businessinsider.com/scientists-discovered-
massive-freshwater-reserves-underneath-the-Ocean-Floor.

Andrews, E.L. Current Research Information System (CRIS). U.S. Department of

Agriculture. “Water Outreach Education – Facilitating Access to Resources and Best
Practices.” USDA. National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Accessed 7/3/12

Arnold, Ralph. “Some Geologic Aspects of the Stephan Reiss concept of Finding
Primary Water.” Filed in 1960 at the U.S. Geological Survey and Banner Club,
California Institute of Technology). 1960.

Burridge, Gaston. “New Source of Water for Desert Lands?” Desert Magazine. April
1954.

CBS Radio News. San Francisco Bay Area. http://snfrancisco.bsloal.com. Accessed

April 2, 2013.

Eghbal, Morad. “”Earth-Generated Water: A Potential Solution.” Infinite Energy/The

Magazine of New Science and Technology. Issue 33. 2000.

Gourlay, Robert. Environmental Research and Information Consortium. “Primary

Water.” www.eri.com.au. June 2007.

Green, Roger. “About Primary Water.” Bloom the Desert and Breakthru Technologies.
[email protected]

Hebenstreit, Lyn. “Deep Hydrology – the Promise of Primary Water.” The Global
Resource Alliance. 2013.

O’Neill, Gregory. “Primary Water – Water for a Thirsty World.” Science to Sage
Magazine. March/April 2014.

Primary Water Institute. “Accessing Primary Water in the Mountains of Kenya.” Video
available from the Institute.

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Rooke, Lloyd. Letter to the Editor. Desert Sun Magazine. June 1954.

Salina, Irena. “FLOW: For Love of Water.” Documentary. 2013.

Salzman, Michael H. “New Water for a Thirsty World.” Los Angeles: Science
Foundation Press. 1960. The digital version of the book can be downloaded at
www.newwatersources.org.

United States Geological Survey. “Water Cycles.

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclehi.html