My apologies for being off line for a couple weeks.  We finished the summer semester the first week of August, and are now gearing up for the Fall semester.  Lots to do, and proposals and other projects to complete before the plunge.  The most interesting project this summer has been the conclusion of a national survey of aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) projects.  The concept of ASR wells is to store water underground until you need it later.  If you have a utility with limited water supplies, or if you have high demands a certain part of the year but not the rest, ASR has been touted as a solution.  Storage underground eliminates the evaporation losses, but the question has always been can you get the water back.  The survey, which will be fully published next year, shows 204 sites.  It shows only about a third are operational projects and over 50 that have been functionally abandoned.  The reasons for abandoning them include metals leaching(mostly a Florida problem), the inability to recovery the water (particularly a problem in brackish aquifers), lack of capacity and trihalomethanes (a regulatory issue in a couple states).  ASR was successful with limited injection rates (700 gpm) and where the aquifer was denuddded (South Carolina).  Growth seems to be in the west after a lot of effort in the southeast.  The road forward should prove interesting.  With completion of the study it is hoped that more data can be gleaned to indicate the factors that make ASR project successful, thereby increasing the rate of success for the future.