Hydrogeologist Greg Brick discovered that the groundwater under downtown Minneapolis is way warmer than it should be. Let’s dig into how he found that, and why it’s important.
Links
- Greg Brick’s website
- Atlas Obscura article with pictures of Greg exploring Schieks Cave
- Peer-reviewed book featuring a chapter by Greg
- Minnesota Spring Inventory (MN DNR)
- John Snow
Attributions
Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.
This episode was edited by Sherry Johnson, hosted by Ian R Buck, and was transcribed by Stina Neel. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Transcript
[00:00:00] Ian Buck: Welcome to the Streets dot MN podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Coming to you from an undisclosed, secure location in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I’m your host Ian R Buck. Many of my favorite episodes are ones where we get to grab academic researchers and have nerdy conversations about their areas of expertise.
[00:00:27] Ian Buck: So when Hydrogeologist Greg Brick emailed us with a pitch about a groundwater heat island effect that he discovered under downtown Minneapolis, I was very excited to have him on the show. So let’s dive in.
[00:00:42] Greg Brick: I am a hydrogeologist. I work for private environmental consulting firms. I taught in academia, uh, and laterally, uh, mapped springs in the state of Minnesota for the Department of Natural Resources.
[00:00:58] Ian Buck: And, um. Let’s get into the springs thing just a little bit. So what was the goal of, of that project? Like why was, why was the state interested in, in mapping all those springs?
[00:01:09] Greg Brick: Yeah. Well the state wasn’t interested in mapping out the springs as a problem, and they got sued by Trout Unlimited. I. Some years ago for ignoring the natural resources of our state, and that was because springs are important in the natural environment as being, uh, trout habitat and habitat for, uh, rare plants, uh, like calcareous fens and so on.
[00:01:34] Greg Brick: And they, apparently these were trout unlimited thought these were being ignored. And so when a, a, a certain amount of legacy funding became available, the, the state decided to put it towards mapping the state springs. Mm-hmm. I was a natural for that because I was the first one to systematically map the springs of the Twin Cities back in the 1990s as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota.
[00:02:02] Greg Brick: And I had written that up and. Uh, a classic article that became actually required reading in University of Minnesota, uh, hydro courses.
[00:02:14] Ian Buck: That’s always a good feeling.
[00:02:15] Greg Brick: Yeah. So at that point, you know, students are forced to read you, you know, you’re, you’re there. You’re, therefore you are much more important and Sure.
[00:02:23] Greg Brick: So,
[00:02:23] Ian Buck: or at least you’re gonna get that call, right. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:02:26] Greg Brick: So, yes, I got, got the call and, um. For this spring mapping project, but it was, it was for four years.
[00:02:35] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:35] Greg Brick: There are thousands of springs in Minnesota and I couldn’t get to all, and, and I didn’t, and everyone knew that I set up front, I’m not gonna be able map every last spring in this state.
[00:02:47] Greg Brick: And it was apart from people, uh, an assistant and some excellent technical help at the DNR. It was just me. Nice. I mean, it was just me against all the springs of the state. And so I had to fall. I had, it’s not gonna work, just beating the bushes to find these, like I had done in the nineties. I, I had to employ technology and what uh, I did was I found that there was a very characteristic signature of springs on Lidar.
[00:03:16] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:17] Greg Brick: Um, which is a, one of the state coverages. And so everyone knows what radar is, and so just imagine radar, but with light, um, and light in a certain bandwidth. So it’s, we’re dealing with lasers here, laser measuring, and, uh, and this, so,
[00:03:34] Ian Buck: so this would be like, like aerial, so like a, an airplane flying overhead.
[00:03:37] Ian Buck: And. Shooting down lidar.
[00:03:40] Greg Brick: Yeah. Everyone knows that, uh, you know, the people on the ground should not, you know, point lasers at airplanes. That’s a big no-no.
[00:03:50] Ian Buck: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And hopefully the, the airplanes don’t point lasers at us. Right.
[00:03:53] Greg Brick: But they, but they’re pointing ’em at us all the time, is the problem.
[00:03:57] Greg Brick: Okay. And so, no, but. So what this does gives us a coverage feature that is, the landscape gets mapped with this la this laser light. Mm-hmm. Uh, and I found out after a while what it was about springs that was very distinctive and this allowed me to save immense amount of time.
[00:04:16] Ian Buck: Right. Because, ’cause what’s the traditional way of finding a spring?
[00:04:18] Greg Brick: Yeah. Beaten in the bushes. I had all kinds of weird suggests. Some of, no, some of ’em make sense, but they weren’t real, but they didn’t work as I found. Mm-hmm. One of ’em was that, uh, infrared cameras because mm-hmm. Springs come out in winter, you know, especially they are, the water is a
[00:04:35] Ian Buck: lot warmer than its surroundings that
[00:04:37] Greg Brick: warmer than surround and that really, that really gives a strong signal and infrared.
[00:04:42] Greg Brick: So that’s, that part is true. But the problem with it, I had, I got a very fancy infrared cam FLIR cameras are called and went around and I immediately found that this ain’t gonna work because you get great images of springs with this camera, but you have, there are so many distracting elements in the field of view that you have to be pretty much right up at the rock outcrop to see the spring.
[00:05:05] Greg Brick: Mm-hmm. And at that point you can just. See it. Yeah. And then you can just, so it defeats the purpose. So it’s like why bother? Okay. So that wasn’t gonna work. And so finally, I, I hit upon lidar and this, this was an enormous savings because I was looking at going around to each individual state park mm-hmm.
[00:05:24] Greg Brick: In Minnesota, beating the bushes for the springs. And then it is like, lo and behold, on lighter I can see them.
[00:05:30] Ian Buck: Were you just doing stuff on public land or were you also trying to map stuff?
[00:05:33] Greg Brick: You see, public land was prioritized. And the idea was if there’s, if there are private landowners that would let readily let me on their land, and I did those too.
[00:05:44] Greg Brick: Yes. Mm-hmm. I threw those in. I had priorities and the first one was to do the map, the state lands, ’cause they’re the easiest. I have the access. And then theoretically, once those were completely and totally mapped and they never were just ’cause of the limits of the funding, then I could go, then I could, you know, do the. Uh, the private land in Minnesota River Valley, it’s really what you have to do is you have to mail letters to all these people, like that live, like, let’s just say you detect in the area and you know there’s some really good springs in there. Because you can see ’em from the highway and you want to go in and map ’em.
[00:06:22] Greg Brick: You gotta send letters to all those, find out who they are. Se send letters and then they gotta respond. The response rate is not great. Right. Because people do not want to cooperate with A DNR frequently, I think. ’cause I, I kind of understand why.
[00:06:36] Ian Buck: Well, I’m imagining if I. Received like an email that said like, Hey, we found a spring on your, you know, like, do you want to come? And, and I’m like, that’s not, that sounds like a phishing attempt to me, you know?
[00:06:47] Greg Brick: Well, it could be. Well, even if you think it’s, I mean, even if you, you know, you see the official letterhead, you know, you don’t, even if you, you think it’s, you know, it is a DNR that’s terrifying too. ’cause what did I do wrong?
[00:06:59] Ian Buck: Right, right, right, right.
[00:07:00] Greg Brick: Why are these people, and if they come on my land, what, what other things are they going to see that maybe they’re, they. They’ll see something, I’ll get a, you know, I’m gonna get written up for something else That little did they know that they were just gonna get this nerd who wanted to come and check out a spring, like, you know. Yeah, no,
[00:07:16] Greg Brick: I, I got all kinds of interesting questions from the, the public as I was, yeah. You know, people would ask me like about burn permits and fishing regulations. Mm-hmm. I have no idea what, what to tell you. I, you know,
[00:07:32] Ian Buck: people get so scared of the government, but like when you meet and you chat with like public servants, you’re like, wow, these are, it’s a bunch of nerds.
[00:07:39] Ian Buck: They’re really passionate about the thing that they have been hired to do and like that is their area of focus. I love people who work in the public sector.
[00:07:49] Greg Brick: Yeah. You like eco waters? See, I was with the Eco Waters division. Uh, if you want to get scared, maybe it would be like some of the enforcement division then, then it’s like, uh oh. They’re, but no, I’m, I was just harmless. Yep.
[00:08:02] Ian Buck: The Springs, of course, is not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about some underwater groundwater warming phenomena that you discovered here in the Twin Cities. You discovered this after the spring, uh, uh, pro project.
[00:08:17] Greg Brick: No, this is actually before.
[00:08:18] Ian Buck: Oh, okay. So, so yeah. So walk us through like, what, what is this groundwater warming phenomenon? How did you discover it? Like what are we talk, what are we talking about here?
[00:08:27] Greg Brick: Yeah. So it’s, it’s easy if to begin with Joseph Nicolette. Okay. Um, the, he’s a French scientist who came here in the 1800s
[00:08:36] Ian Buck: mm-hmm. And Nicolette Avenue is named after him. Yeah.
[00:08:40] Greg Brick: Yep. Nico, Nicolette Mall. Nicollet Island mm-hmm. Are named after him. And he was a very precise person, and when he came across large springs, he would measure their temperatures very exactly. So we owe to him the earliest good measurements of groundwater temperature in the state of Minnesota.
[00:09:01] Greg Brick: And in particular, the one he measured that’s relevant here is Cold Water Spring. Okay? Mm-hmm. This is a huge spring. Flowing about 60 gallons per minute, um, down at the va, approximately down by the VA hospital. Mm-hmm. But the, um, uh, the National Park Service is now made at the cold water unit. Um, and ’cause it’s historic significance.
[00:09:25] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:26] Greg Brick: Uh, so he, so anyways, he measured the temperature of this spring in 1836 as being, um. 46 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay. And this is an important number because it is the baseline temperature for what groundwater should be at this latitude. So groundwater temperature varies usually according to latitude.
[00:09:51] Greg Brick: So the, the farther,
[00:09:53] Ian Buck: but it’s remains consistent across like no matter what time of year it’s,
[00:09:57] Greg Brick: yeah, exactly. So. Uh, as you move further, uh, away from the equator, and we’re 45 degrees north of the equator, the groundwater, or in the Twin Cities area, winter or summer should be about 46 degrees Fahrenheit.
[00:10:13] Ian Buck: Pretty easy to remember since 45, 46.
[00:10:15] Greg Brick: Yeah. Yep. It exactly. Yeah. When I went around measuring the temperature of thousands of springs in the state, they were all about that. Mm-hmm. The ones in the metro, I noticed. However, and all this data is online, the Minnesota Spring, you, if you just go to the DNR website and look for, uh, you know, Minnesota Spring inventory, you can, you’ll pull up a map with all these blue dots.
[00:10:40] Greg Brick: And then you can click on one of those blue dots and it’ll bring up the information on that. And that, that’s all, that’s information that basically I collected over the course of years. The springs in the metro, up and down through the river gorge are elevated in temperature.
[00:10:56] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:57] Greg Brick: It could be, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 degrees Fahrenheit above what they should be.
[00:11:02] Greg Brick: Um, an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota did an intense research project at Cold Water Spring where Nicolette had originally measured his temperature, and it’s a multiple year project, and she found that the temperature of cold water spring nowadays is, uh, it is elevated by several degrees above what it should be, and it, it’s doesn’t even approach 46 mm-hmm. Degrees Fahrenheit anymore. It, it’s well above that,
[00:11:32] Ian Buck: which, yeah. Well, a few, a few degrees. If I don’t have the background thinking about spring water temperatures, right, like a few degrees Fahrenheit doesn’t sound like a huge difference, but I also know that when we’re talking about global climate change, right?
[00:11:45] Ian Buck: The entire world going two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is like a huge deal. Where on the scale from like not. Not at all important to, this is going to be very, very bad for the human species. Are we talking, you know, how, like, how, how concerned should we be about a few degrees Fahrenheit in spring water temperature?
[00:12:03] Greg Brick: Well, I, I’ll get to that when I talk about, all right. The, when I get to, I, I talk about the, uh, the Schieks Cave.
[00:12:10] Ian Buck: Yeah.
[00:12:10] Greg Brick: Uh, but here it, even a few degrees here is, uh, can be disastrous because, uh, trout depend on mm-hmm. Trout are very finicky. They’re what we call Stenohermal. They can only take a narrow temperature range in there.
[00:12:29] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:30] Greg Brick: Um, and so trout habitat is very locked into having cold. Well, in winter it seems very warm and in summer it seems very cold to us according, you know, compared with the ambient temperatures. Mm-hmm. And that’s what a lot of what Trout Unlimited was getting at with this lawsuit. It’s like you need to, Hey, DNR,
[00:12:50] Ian Buck: we need data to know what we don’t know.
[00:12:52] Greg Brick: We need data about this. Right. Since I did a lot of work on the springs of the North Shore. And, and measuring the temperatures up there. So to get to your question for humans, uh, you know, a few degrees Fahrenheit with our springs, that’s not going to, unless you’re a fisherman. Mm-hmm. It’s not going to impact you.
[00:13:12] Greg Brick: But something else, uh, will.
[00:13:14] Ian Buck: So the, so trout, if they have such a narrow band of temperatures that they’re, that they can handle, what’s the phrase for that? In an ecosystem that, like, they’re, they’re, uh, they’re like the canary in the coal mine, right? Yes. Yes. Like if that, if that species goes, then you know that you’re starting
[00:13:30] Ian Buck: to have a problem. Right.
[00:13:31] Greg Brick: In, you know, coming decades, Minnesota is gonna have a huge problem with trout. Mm-hmm. I mean, that’s basically, uh, you know, you’re gonna have to go up, um, if the lettuce across the Canadian border anymore, you know, you’re gonna have to, you have to. You know, go up to Lake Nipigon and, you know, places like that to get the really good trout fishing.
[00:13:53] Greg Brick: Mm-hmm. Um, because it’s, you know, this with this warmer and, uh, drier trend and the fisheries on the North Shore, they’re very concerned. Um, yeah. About this, this, even if even a few degrees is, is, is, is gonna be catastrophic for, for the habitat up there.
[00:14:13] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:14] Greg Brick: I’m really queued in on having measured the temperatures of thousands of springs.
[00:14:19] Greg Brick: I’m really queued in to, you know, what, what they should be. Yeah. You know, if, if, if anyone knows what a spring temperature should be, it’s probably me. Mm-hmm. I mean, and a few. Several of my colleagues at the DNR and a few more people, um, they were really like, Hey, this is, this is what looks normal to us.
[00:14:40] Greg Brick: So that’s why it came as an immense shock, uh, when I measured the groundwater un at a spring under the city of Minneapolis, under the downtown area. In a cave 75 feet below street level, uh, and
[00:14:57] Ian Buck: Okay. Now, so, so that, that’s a story right there. Yeah. You know? Oh, yes. We can’t just, we can’t just skate by that, you know, like, how, how does one even get into a cave that’s 75 feet below downtown Minneapolis?
[00:15:09] Greg Brick: Yeah. So this cave is well known. It was discovered in 1904. Mm-hmm. And it’s had various names over the years. It’s been called the Farmers and Mechanics Bank Cave. It’s been called the Manhole Cave and Laterally Schiek’s Cave. Because it was under the Schiek’s Gentleman’s Club.
[00:15:28] Ian Buck: Yes. Which is not there anymore.
[00:15:30] Ian Buck: Yes. I had to go and do some research to figure out who had bought it. Since then, and I don’t remember what, what that business is named now, but I’ll, I’ll put, um, I’ll put that information in the show notes. But the manhole that, that, you know, I saw a picture of you standing in front of this manhole and it’s, it’s like right there at is, is it like Washington and like Fifth Avenue kind of area?
[00:15:48] Greg Brick: It, it’s on, it’s on uh, Fourth Street South. Okay. Yeah. And like Second Avenue. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, the heart of downtown. Yeah, so it’s the old farmers and mechanics bank. It looks like a Greek temple that’s still there. That in itself is another story because this cave being discovered under the bank, it gave them the E, sort of the heebie geebies.
[00:16:12] Greg Brick: Yeah, there. I see it there at the, on your screen.
[00:16:15] Ian Buck: Yeah. And actually it looks like they’ve repaved, uh, they have, yeah, this street, so that, that, um, like hexagonal, uh, manhole is no longer there, uh, next to the, ah, the downtown cabaret. That’s, ah, that’s, that’s the business that’s currently there.
[00:16:29] Greg Brick: Thank you.
[00:16:30] Greg Brick: Yeah. So the Greek temple is still there. It’s a downtown cabaret. Uh, but they were immensely concerned that people would dig up from the vaults, uh, you know, from the, from the cave into the treasure vaults of the bank.
[00:16:44] Greg Brick: I am is, from what I’ve seen, I’m not at, I wouldn’t be at all worried. It’s quite some distance.
[00:16:49] Greg Brick: You and I said it’s 75 feet below street leve.l You’d have a lot of digging to do. Mm-hmm. To, to get from that cave. Upwards,
[00:16:57] Ian Buck: you know, to, well, this is why you’re not the main character in a heist movie, because you’re not willing to try.
[00:17:03] Greg Brick: Yeah. I suppose.
[00:17:06] Ian Buck: Um, so anyway, so we’ve got this cave. Yes. Underground, deep underground.
[00:17:11] Ian Buck: Um, has been, how extensively was it explored back in the day?
[00:17:16] Greg Brick: Oh, very well, they mapped it out. Mm-hmm. Um, it was mapped out in 1929. It was mapped in when they discovered it in 1904, and then again in 1929, they did a really good survey and they had to do this because they installed a bunch of piers in the cave to hold the ceiling of the cave up because mm-hmm.
[00:17:37] Greg Brick: They were concerned they were building heavier and heavier buildings. Right. And they’re concerned that. Hmm. This is gonna, this is gonna collapse the cave and a genuine concern. Right? Uh, and I wouldn’t be surprised if someday, like a giant sinkhole began to form around that part of downtown Minneapolis because those piers are no law.
[00:17:59] Greg Brick: What that was one of my discoveries is that those piers are no longer supporting the ceiling of the cave. The piers have, have themselves. Uh, like settled. Settled and left a gap on top.
[00:18:15] Ian Buck: Mm.
[00:18:15] Greg Brick: So they’re not in connection with the ceiling? See, it’s not, they’re not. So there’s quite a few of these piers, but they’re not supporting the ceiling.
[00:18:22] Greg Brick: Like they,
[00:18:23] Ian Buck: okay. So somebody will have to take a look at that, uh, in the future.
[00:18:26] Greg Brick: They rarely, they rarely go down there though. I,
[00:18:31] Ian Buck: but again, that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about the water.
[00:18:35] Greg Brick: Yeah. So eventually I made, I, I was able to walk through the storm drains to this cave
[00:18:42] Ian Buck: mm-hmm.
[00:18:42] Greg Brick: In the 1990s. Um, and nowadays that sounds horrific and you would probably arrested for something like that. Uh, but the mindset was very different before 9/11. You had to realize, uh, and when I went to. The Minneapolis sewer department to get maps for these ca They were, they gave me the maps. They were very encouraging and every, and it’s an, it’s an, an attitude that’s unthinkable nowadays.
[00:19:11] Greg Brick: Mm. They would never, you, uh, they, they would never give you those maps now. Sure. They would, you would be ushered out the door and, and, uh, told
[00:19:20] Ian Buck: liability is a hell of a drug. It is, yeah.
[00:19:22] Greg Brick: And they tell you to scram They were not, there’s, there’s no way they. Uh, but anyways, it was different back then. Um, I was able to get into the cave with, you know, friends and so on.
[00:19:35] Greg Brick: Uh, it’s not a trip you wanna make yourself. Uh, and it took about two hours starting at the River Banks mm-hmm. To from Mill what’s, what’s now Mill Ruins Park. Mm-hmm. It was before, well it was was Mill Ruins Park, and we made our way, uh, to the cave. And I was able to get temperature met with a, a precision thermometer, and I was, I was just absolutely shocked that the, the temperature of the groundwater in there was 66 degrees Fahrenheit.
[00:20:05] Greg Brick: So the normal what it should be. If there’s no impacts, if it’s just normal ambient ground, it should be 46 degrees. Mm-hmm. And it was 66 degrees. I’ve never seen anything I, I’ve never seen in, in all my years as an environmental consultant in academia. And, uh, with the DNR I had never seen, you know, a, a a.
[00:20:32] Greg Brick: You know, like a, a thermal anomaly.
[00:20:36] Greg Brick: Yeah. …that great.
[00:20:37] Ian Buck: And that can’t be explained just by the difference in like, like all of the springs that we’ve been measuring. Have been right at the surface. So that’s where the groundwater is coming out. 75 feet down. It’s not possible for it to be like 20 degrees, like for that to be normal.
[00:20:55] Ian Buck: Like how many No. That it just,
[00:20:56] Greg Brick: it just can’t. Uh,
[00:20:57] Ian Buck: like how many other caves, 75 feet down have you measured?
[00:21:00] Greg Brick: No, no. I, I’ve, I’ve, uh, in my years as a caver, yeah. Uh, I have, you know, explored plenty of caves in southeastern Minnesota, natural caves, you know, Mystery Cave, Niagara Cave, which is named after it’s waterfall.
[00:21:18] Greg Brick: They don’t have, um,
[00:21:20] Ian Buck: they’re pretty similar to the, to the, the normal expected temperature. Mm-hmm.
[00:21:23] Greg Brick: They don’t have, you know, so this, this is, this is really an oddball mm-hmm. Thing, uh, and. When you, when I read the original reports, they indicated in addition to, to Nicolette’s baseline data from 1836. Mm-hmm.
[00:21:41] Greg Brick: There is a report from 1907 talking about this cave where they indicate that the water is icy cold. So when again, it’s in that 40 degree. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a century from 1907 to 2007, that was the time, my last trip down there. It had warm 20 degrees Fahrenheit and um. So when I went back to the cave, I made multiple trips down there.
[00:22:06] Greg Brick: So I discovered that immensely warmed groundwater, um, on one trip. And then I decided to do a more systematic survey of the underbelly of Minneapolis, wherever I could find drip waters or seepage waters and tunnels or in caves down there. Mm-hmm. Um, and what I found was that, uh, as you move away from the surface.
[00:22:31] Greg Brick: The, the, the cave is above the tunnel system. The, the main storm drain system. All the springs in that old tunnel system were, and by that I mean places where groundwater was oozing or shooting in some cases through the wall, through the cracked lining of the, the sewer tunnel. That groundwater was just a few degrees of the expected above the um.
[00:22:55] Greg Brick: What it should be, so I’m trying to say here, is that the groundwater is warmest near the surface, up near where the cave, you know, okay. At the cave as, as you go deeper. From the cave downwards, it gets cooler down more towards what the expected value is. Mm-hmm. And this actually fits the modeling done by the St. Anthony Falls Hydraulic Laboratory, which is associated with the University of Minnesota. They did a theoretical study and they didn’t know about any of my data or any of my work, or had no idea who I was or anything like that. Mm-hmm. So completely cut off from any knowing about any, anything that I’m doing.
[00:23:36] Greg Brick: They did a com, a modeling study. And the, the question was asked, how much would groundwater under the Twin Cities warm under a climate change scenario with global warming?
[00:23:50] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:50] Greg Brick: Uh, due to the urban heat island effect and so on. And they determined that it would be about five degrees Fahrenheit. And when I saw that value, I just had to laugh.
[00:24:02] Greg Brick: Real value. 20 degrees. Yeah. Yeah. Fahrenheit. Uh, so they were way off. But the thing is, they had pretty much nailed the temperature of the springs and the river gorge. Those are elevated about five degrees Fahrenheit, so they were right. Their predictions were exactly right about the, the springs in the Mississippi River Gorge, but under the downtown area, it’s way off.
[00:24:26] Greg Brick: It’s, it’s, the temperature is, is much elevated and as I just mentioned, this is due to an urban heat island effect. Mm-hmm. The, the pavement. Uh,
[00:24:38] Ian Buck: that this sounds like it’s much more like concentrated It is, than the urban heat island effect that we think of for air temperature. Right. Where like metro wide.
[00:24:48] Ian Buck: Yeah. In the Twin Cities, you’re a few degrees warmer than the rural areas surrounding us.
[00:24:54] Greg Brick: Yeah, so, so, uh, everyone is familiar has kind of like a, an intuitive sense of what an urban heat island effect is. You know, you drive into the city on a hot summer day and it’s like, ugh, you know, the heat on the pavement and it’s just like mm-hmm.
[00:25:09] Greg Brick: You know, you could fry an egg in on the pavement and. It’s so hot. That’s what I’m talking about here. Um, that heat is conducted downwards through the pavement into the underlying groundwater.
[00:25:22] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:23] Greg Brick: Same thing with buildings. Uh, you know, you have boiler, what do you have in winter? You know, you have boilers running and all this Right?
[00:25:30] Greg Brick: Kind of leakage, water leakage and stuff. It leaks off into a sump and then where does it go? All that is kind of heating up at the groundwater under the city. And that fits the model of what I found in that the, the warmest temperatures, you know, the 20 degree, uh, of that, that 20 degree excursion above normal, that’s kind of in, in the top part of the strata.
[00:25:59] Greg Brick: And as you go deeper and deeper down under that, it gets cooler and cooler. Mm-hmm. And that, and that exactly kind of matches that model that this is doing it due to an urban heat island. Effect. And so it all kind of comes together, um, at that point.
[00:26:17] Ian Buck: So, so if it is concentrated in a relatively small area, is this something that we need to worry about from an environmental perspective?
[00:26:27] Ian Buck: I don’t think anybody’s really thinking about like the, the wild ecosystem of downtown Minneapolis. Right. So like what? What is, what is the negative effects that we’re looking at from this?
[00:26:37] Greg Brick: Yeah, so they, they are, they are potentially quite serious now, as I mentioned, that just that minimal amount of warming with the, the springs in the metro area, um, that that’s gonna impact, you know, plant and animal habitat. And just for the record, yes, we do have a trout spring in the Twin Cities down at the Mall of America at Ikes Creek. Mm. You wouldn’t know it, but um, just practically in the shadows of the Mall of America, there is a, uh, a very pristine
[00:27:12] Ian Buck: is that, that that natural preserve area?
[00:27:16] Greg Brick: It’s by the bass ponds Yeah.
[00:27:18] Greg Brick: Down there in Bloomington. Uh, and very nice. And it is a DNR, you know, recognized, uh, trout stream. So we do have ’em.
[00:27:27] Ian Buck: So yeah, so like the, like the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge area? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
[00:27:31] Greg Brick: yeah. So I, I advise, you know, anyone who wants like a nice thing to do when, you know, summer or winter, go down there and, and, and have a look at that.
[00:27:40] Greg Brick: Um,
[00:27:41] Ian Buck: oh look, Bass Pond’s Trail is, uh, is, is marked on Google Maps here. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:27:46] Greg Brick: Yeah, you can go down there and have a look for, uh, yourself at our, the only genuine, uh, trout stream, uh, in the metro area. It So the, the, the minimal, that minimal warming that we get from the urban heat island effect at the edges, yeah.
[00:28:03] Greg Brick: That’s causing problem, could potentially cause problems here, like at Ike’s Creek and so on. But the big danger with the, the. This, this huge warming under the, under the city itself. The one that I detected, um, is that, uh, there are plenty of studies that it’s, it’s a very well documented that, um, in climate warming scenarios.
[00:28:30] Greg Brick: That waterborne illnesses spike. Mm. They, the, the, you know, the warmer the water is, the, the, you know, um, things like cholera, which fortunately we don’t have that here right now. Cholera, typhoid. We have had some of the springs in the Minnesota River Gorge have people have come down with typhoid from drinking at them if they’re unfiltered.
[00:28:53] Greg Brick: Um. Uh, diarrheal diseases, especially gastrointestinal ailments that, you know, that sort of little thing where you’re just, uh, you know, you know, vomiting and not feeling well for a few days. That kind of thing. Those diarrheal ailments, uh, especially all those are promoted by warming waters. Mm-hmm. And I, I was corresponding with.
[00:29:20] Greg Brick: Uh, someone at the Minnesota Department of Health, uh, Pat Sarafolean, and he was saying that, um, the engineers have known for years that, um, the groundwater under the cities is, uh, you know, it’s quite contaminated with sewage bacteria and there’s not much we can do about it because even with, you know, perfect house connections, perfect building connections and everything, it, it’s just, you know, it’s just gonna leak out.
[00:29:52] Greg Brick: It’s, it that stuff’s, there’s just gonna be little leaks here and there. And these back like leaks,
[00:29:57] Ian Buck: like into the tap water you’re saying or no?
[00:29:59] Greg Brick: No. In. Into the groundwater.
[00:30:01] Ian Buck: Oh, okay. Okay.
[00:30:02] Greg Brick: So there’s gonna be lead, like where a house can, our building connection is like a few drops here. That, but that, that, that is enough to, you know, inoculate the groundwater under our cities and with these warming temperatures, that is, you know, there’s the, the food material, the oxygen, so on, they are going to multiply down there. Okay. That’s, no, that’s no big deal to us. You know, it’s no skin off our back until you have. Uh, a water main break. Uh, and we get those here in Minneapolis.
[00:30:39] Greg Brick: You know, we get several of those per I think, usually in the winter. Uh, and some other cities are, have a lot of older infrastructure like Jackson, Mississippi. I mean, their, they, their water mains are popping like firecrackers on the 4th of July. During a water main break, you get something called back siphonage, and that is that as soon as you lose that pressure in a force main, uh, and it creates a void in there, it sucks in the ambient water.
[00:31:08] Greg Brick: And that’s why the, um,
[00:31:10] Ian Buck: and the water main is you’re, you’re talking. The water that is going to our homes and businesses. Right. So that is the tap water.
[00:31:17] Greg Brick: Yeah. So it will get into the distribution system and that’s why they issue boil water alerts after a water main break in Minneapolis. Uh, because you.
[00:31:28] Greg Brick: And some of these, some of these boil water. Fortunately not here, but I know like the ones in Jackson, Mississippi where as a case I’ve studied, you know, some of these boil water. I mean, you, you have to like be, be boiling your water all summer. I mean, ’cause it’s, you know, ’cause it is one after another after another instant.
[00:31:47] Greg Brick: Mm-hmm. Like this. Um, so this tells us. That, you know, replacing old infrastructure. I, I guess I’ve just given them a new reason to replace old infrastructure. Sure. Because, you know, I gave this as a talk at the American Waterworks Association meeting in Duluth. I. And there’s a lot of people from the Minneapolis, you know, water works up there.
[00:32:08] Ian Buck: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:32:08] Greg Brick: And that, that was one of the thing, the messages I want to convey is that a lot of times you’ll have these outbreaks of, uh, you know, these sudden outbreaks of diarrheal illnesses and it’s like no one, no one can seem to really pin into anything. You know, it sounds like, hmm, it was this, or it is like.
[00:32:26] Greg Brick: It was exactly that lunch counter or mm-hmm. You know, and, uh, what I’m trying to point out is this may account for some of those things.
[00:32:36] Ian Buck: Are you trying to be the John Snow of Minnesota?
[00:32:39] Greg Brick: Uh, yeah,
[00:32:40] Greg Brick: yeah, yeah. Basically, yeah. No, your, your references, you know, they’re. Did, did you read that book that the, the, the book about?
[00:32:48] Greg Brick: Well, there’s been many books about Snow, but I,
[00:32:50] Ian Buck: yeah, I, I don’t remember what classes he’s come up in, but you know, like it, the story of how he figured out that like the well water was Yep. You know, the source of, yeah. Like, um, i. It’s, it’s well known. Yeah.
[00:33:02] Greg Brick: Yeah. Take, yeah. His famous phrase was, take the handle off the Broad Street pump and the cholera epidemic will end. Mm-hmm. And that’s pretty much what happened. And interestingly enough, at the time he said that that was like, um. Years and years before the cholera bacillus had been even been discovered.
[00:33:22] Ian Buck: Right? Yeah.
[00:33:23] Greg Brick: Uh, so, and it was just a statistical thing. It’s like, there’s something wrong here. And so that, that’s kind of what I’m saying now.
[00:33:30] Greg Brick: I did, I am not an epidemiologist. I, you know, I filed a data request with the Department of Health to get the old information about, you know, the information about. Diarrhea, illnesses and, and outbreaks in the city of Minne. I wanted to like, maybe see if I could do that same Broad Street pump John Snow gig thing.
[00:33:52] Greg Brick: Um, and they said, no, no, no. Uh, you gotta go with, uh, you know, Minneapolis Health. I went to them and let’s, I don’t know if you filed data requests, uh, or not in, in, in.
[00:34:02] Ian Buck: I try to avoid that kind of frustration in my life, you know?
[00:34:05] Greg Brick: Yeah. You nailed, it’s a frustration because. That of all the data, the data requests that I filed, both the City of St. Paul, Minneapolis about various things. Uh, they always, it always turns up like with kind of like a shrug of the shoulders. Hmm. It’s like, huh, well, uh, you know, that’s kind, scattered. We don’t really know. Um, and that’s what they said here. They said, well, it’s probably often a lot of paper records and, sorry, we can’t help you.
[00:34:36] Greg Brick: And, um, I didn’t pursue it any further there. It’s like, this is something, this is a perfect project where, uh, you know, for graduate student, put a data logger down, uh, under the City of Minneapolis at these springs, you know, so you can get continuous data over a long stretch of time to see what that groundwater temperature is it fluctuating with the seasons or not. And then, you know, for an epidemiology student to, you know, look at those clusters, uh, you know, look at the statistics, see, can you find disease clusters in there? Uh, I know that, you know that that’s a very contentious thing and, and that I, I know there. Somebody was really bugging me about that.
[00:35:17] Greg Brick: Like, you gotta get that data and stuff. And I disappointed, you know, even in the case of well-known, uh, disease clusters, um, you know, like Love Canal and New York state and stuff, or, or near to home like the St. Louis, um, Riley Tar. Uh, cancer cluster, um, from years ago.
[00:35:39] Ian Buck: Where was that?
[00:35:40] Greg Brick: In, in the, the Riley Tae Superfund site in St. Louis Park.
[00:35:46] Ian Buck: Oh, wow, okay.
[00:35:46] Greg Brick: It was, yeah. Now I’m, I’m probably dating myself even mentioning that case. Um, but that was a big one to study in school. Oh, ri tar, you know. But even with that, you know, as soon as you identify what you think is a candidate, it, it’s gonna be disputed immediately. Isn’t somebody’s gonna say, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:36:04] Greg Brick: You don’t, you don’t have the right error bars on that and all, you know, and so I’m not really the right I need
[00:36:09] Ian Buck: again, because they don’t wanna be liable.
[00:36:11] Greg Brick: Right.
[00:36:11] Greg Brick: Yeah.
[00:36:12] Greg Brick: Yeah. So they’re gonna, they’re gonna like fault it in every which way they can. So whether I came up with two with a small amount of data or a huge amount of data, it’s, I need an epidemiologist to, to really help me.
[00:36:25] Greg Brick: ’cause I’m a geologist by training. That’s not my. I’m the one who discovered the cause of this. That should be good enough. Somebody else has gotta help me out with it. You know, the, the other part of it,
[00:36:36] Ian Buck: you’ve been talking mostly about like concerns with what happens when groundwater gets into water mains into our tap water supply.
[00:36:45] Ian Buck: Um, is there, is there a concern that like. These kinds of waterborne bacteria and, you know, other pathogens, is that going to eventually make it unsafe to go swimming in like the lakes or the river or anything like that?
[00:37:01] Greg Brick: Yeah, it, it. It’s, I think it, you can even narrow it down more than that. There, there is a, there is a definite concern about that, about surface water.
[00:37:11] Greg Brick: Mm-hmm. Because especially, okay, let’s just look at a scenario. You have one of these big springs spewing out sewage bacteria. I. Um, and where does that go? It’s gonna drain into surface water at some point. A lot of the springs that we have in the Mississippi River Gorge, they go into the Mississippi River.
[00:37:29] Greg Brick: Right. So if, if we’re having a problem, if, if the, the aquifer under the city of Minneapolis is just a giant fermentation vessel, which is kind of what I’m claiming it is. That ultimately, and as that drains away, that’s gonna get into, that’s gonna end up in the Mississippi River. A lot of the, but there’s a more immediate danger even than, than swimmers, and this is something I’ve pointed out too, is that there are a lot of people, uh, who believe in raw water.
[00:38:01] Greg Brick: You know, the, the virtues of drinking raw water, drinking, you know, just spring water, you know, right from the rock face. Mm, mm-hmm. And they will collect it and, uh, drink it. And, uh, it’s got these sewage bacteria in there. I,
[00:38:17] Ian Buck: you know, after these people have clearly never had giardia.
[00:38:20] Greg Brick: Yeah. No, I, I, I wouldn’t drink from these springs. I mean, I, I mean, I’ve gone all over the, there are springs I would drink from. Yes, but there are certainly none of the ones in the metro here. And yet there are people who collect the spring water. I. Um, from the springs in the gorge, and I know it because I either I’ve seen them doing it or you’ll see like the discarded one gallon plastic jugs laying, or you’ll know Oh, okay. You know, somebody was, was collecting water here, Kennedy, at our, at the, you know, at the, at the federal government will now. Begin to praise these, the virtues of raw water, I’m not sure, but, um, it’s, it is not something I, I would mess with. So I, that would be my concern. Like I said, there are documented cases where people have gotten typhoid fever from drinking from the springs in the Twin Cities.
[00:39:15] Greg Brick: There, there was a St. Paul Spring, it was like a newspaper article about, and these kids were drinking there, oh, this good, cool, delicious water. And it’s like. Nope.
[00:39:27] Ian Buck: So, so you’ve mentioned Minneapolis is, you know, where you have collected a fair amount of data about the, the, you know, 75 feet down groundwater temperatures.
[00:39:39] Ian Buck: You’ve mentioned Jackson, Mississippi, uh, Main, you know, like, like are there, are there projects. In multiple places where you have taken data from? Like, do we, do we know if this is a, a phenomenon that is repeating across different metro areas?
[00:39:57] Greg Brick: Okay. Yeah. Thank you for
[00:39:58] Greg Brick: that question. Yeah. So. This I, the, the whole, the whole subject order called subsurface urban heat island.
[00:40:08] Greg Brick: So, uh, an urban heat island is the, you know, the one that, you know, the hot pavements in summer and that sort of thing. A subsurface urban heat island. That’s, that’s when it. As I explained how that happens, how the pavement, the buildings and the pavements will heat up the groundwater underneath. Mm-hmm.
[00:40:28] Greg Brick: And so create like a whole heat island underneath the city in the groundwater. That is a phenomenon that is documented, well documented worldwide, um, especially in Europe and Asia. Okay. Um, there are researcher, in fact, uh, when I wrote a peer reviewed article, um, on this topic, on, on the Minneapolis Heat Island, there was no one around here who could review it ’cause there’s no expertise in the subject.
[00:41:00] Greg Brick: There were some English speaking German scientists who were able to review it for me and make suggestions, you know, look into this and, you know. The, the, the typical editorial suggestions for, you know, improving the article. Um, but that just tells you in the United States in particular, it’s just not a well recognized thing.
[00:41:23] Greg Brick: Um, certainly not in Minnesota. This is the first research I’ve done. This is. Uh, the first recognition of one of these heat islands in the state of Minnesota, and it’s a huge one. Mm-hmm. 20 degrees fair. And it’s not, I know there was a study done like a, a, a, a small, um, groundwater anomaly. Under the city of Winnipeg, like in, in Canada in the 1970s.
[00:41:52] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:41:52] Greg Brick: But it is nothing compared to this. I mean, this is like a really robust bath water kind of, uh, thing that’s going on under our feet here.
[00:42:02] Ian Buck: Right. If you’re taking baths in 66 degree water. Yeah, no, that’s true.
[00:42:06] Greg Brick: No, that’s. Yeah. No, that’s a little too chilly for a bath.
[00:42:10] Ian Buck: Actually. That’s two, that’s too Minnesota for me.
[00:42:11] Ian Buck: Yeah. Um, okay. So, so if this is a well-known phenomenon in by, you know, scientists in Europe and in Asia, like, what are those communities doing in response to this kind of thing? Like, are there mitigation efforts that are being put into place? Or like, yeah. What, what should, what do you think we should be doing?
[00:42:28] Greg Brick: So first of all, what they’re doing. Um, under some of the German cities where these researchers are working, they have entire observation, well networks that are set up specifically to collect that data
[00:42:45] Ian Buck: mm-hmm.
[00:42:45] Greg Brick: The, the, the groundwater temperature. Now we have plenty of, plenty of groundwater wells, uh, of water wells, uh, under the city of Minneapolis.
[00:42:54] Greg Brick: But guess what? None of them are useful for, for this purpose. That was one of my first findings, I was looking for data for this project.
[00:43:04] Ian Buck: Is that because they’re all at the five degree Elevated level?
[00:43:08] Greg Brick: No, It’s because where’s the good water? It’s really deep. Mm-hmm. And so all these wells are screened at 500 or a thousand feet.
[00:43:18] Greg Brick: That’s totally below, ah, the thermal heat. It’s way below. It’s in different layer. It’s separated by multiple layers. From the layers I was looking at, at the top and it’s way down there. And so that water at the bottom, oh yeah, no, that water is 46 degrees here. Mm-hmm. So it’s like, what’s the problem? Well, you’re, you.
[00:43:41] Greg Brick: There are very, very, very few wells that are screened in that in the proper interval because if you did screen a water well in the interval that I’m talking about under the city of Minneapolis, you’d get nothing but contaminated water. It would be sure it would have pH s in it. High chloride, it’d have all kinds of contaminants in it.
[00:44:04] Ian Buck: Yeah.
[00:44:04] Greg Brick: Um, and what they don’t know is it would also be warm. It would also be quite warm. We’re not getting that data, um, because of that.
[00:44:13] Ian Buck: By the way, when you’re exploring in a cave, how do you keep track of how far under the surface you are? How do you even know that ?
[00:44:22] Greg Brick: They only know this because.
[00:44:25] Greg Brick: There’s, there’s the manhole on Fourth Street South goes right down to the cave. Mm. Mm-hmm. And that’s,
[00:44:32] Ian Buck: so that’s pretty easy to measure.
[00:44:33] Greg Brick: That’s measured yeah. That’s on sewer documents. So that’s known that, that’s, you know, how deep that is. So that, that, that’s a real, uh, that’s an easy one. If you’re in one of the natural caves in southeastern Minnesota, it can be tricky to know how far, you know, you gotta do survey from the start at the entrance where you have a known elevation survey. Mm-hmm. Up down. Right.
[00:44:57] Ian Buck: So sounds like a lot of trigonometry.
[00:44:59] Greg Brick: Yes, exactly. Yeah. You did do all that kind of thing. But here it’s real easy ’cause it’s all. It’s all, it’s all very cut and dried, but okay.
[00:45:09] Ian Buck: So anyway, so, so we don’t have monitoring stations. We don’t for keeping track of that.
[00:45:15] Greg Brick: We don’t, yeah, we don’t have a lot of data. I couldn’t even contour my data and that was the frustrating part because I had a modeler in Europe, you know, uh, when I was mod.
[00:45:25] Ian Buck: Is this contouring, is that a statistical analysis?
[00:45:28] Greg Brick: You, well, contouring like the. Uh, the concentrations on the water table where
[00:45:34] Ian Buck: Ah, okay. When you’re, when you’re mapping it out. Yeah.
[00:45:37] Greg Brick: For, you know, when I began as a puppy or a grunt or whatever you want, whatever they’re called nowadays at an environmental firm years ago, my first job out of college. Mm-hmm.
[00:45:49] Greg Brick: You know, and, you know, you make your way to that cubicle and, and, and, and, you know, get to work. Um, the company I was working, it’s called Delta Environmental. Um, and they had a big contract with Amaco Petroleum.
[00:46:05] Ian Buck: Oh wow. Okay.
[00:46:06] Greg Brick: Mm-hmm. Um, uh, to
[00:46:08] Ian Buck: RIP Yeah,
[00:46:10] Greg Brick: yeah. The bp Yeah. They, they’re now, yeah, they’re now Amaco bp. Right. So they were, but we had this, this big contract to study the, uh, leaking underground storage tanks. And one of the first things you learn is you gotta have enough data to. To contour your site. Mm-hmm. You know, you gotta know, okay. Is, is, you know, is the concentration of, uh, you know, benzene going up or down here, you gotta have enough points, right?
[00:46:38] Greg Brick: So, I, I don’t, even with, with, with my surveys and stuff, I have such a limited amount of data. I couldn’t even like draw a con, I could draw a contour lines for the cave. The immediate vicinity, but that was it.
[00:46:51] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:46:52] Greg Brick: So presumably this thermal anomaly runs all the way out under Nicollet Mall and under quite a large area, you know, several square miles, and it would be nice to get that, that kind of data.
[00:47:05] Greg Brick: Um, that would, uh, and we could see what, what kind of beast that we’re dealing with here. Um, and as far as what, what, what you, you know, you know what we can do in the interim again, I think Minneapolis is, has, uh, they, they’ve had a, you know, a good emphasis on. Um, you know, replacing old infrastructure, they realize that some of these old water mains in the 1800s, they realize it’s a problem.
[00:47:33] Greg Brick: It, you know, it, it’s, you know, when the. When, when the groundwater warms, you know, it’s, it, it’s, it causes problems inside and outside the pipes because inside the pipe, you know, if you have a water main break, all those back sewage bacteria get sucked into the distribution system. And then you have to, everyone has to do a boil, boil of water to.
[00:47:55] Greg Brick: You know, to, to, uh, to, to render it safe. But also when that the ground, the groundwater that’s bathing the pipes is physically warmer too.
[00:48:06] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:48:06] Greg Brick: There’s a lot more corrosion going on.
[00:48:09] Ian Buck: Hmm.
[00:48:09] Greg Brick: Um, and that, so the pipes are going to degrade faster mm-hmm. In that warmer water. See, it’s like a double whammy there.
[00:48:19] Greg Brick: Replacing So, you know, better building and, and, and, um, and house connections and, you know, replacing old infrastructure. Those are like, you know, the, the, the kind of things you can, uh, you can do up front
[00:48:37] Ian Buck: is, would, like, would a large scale implementing, you know, like geothermal heating. In downtown Minneapolis, would that help to like suck the heat out of the ground?
[00:48:50] Greg Brick: Yeah. You know, that’s a funny story because um, as I mentioned, you know, in this phenomenon, this phenomenon is much better studied in Europe and the groundwater, for example, under the city of Istanbul, in Turkey mm-hmm. Is quite elevated.
[00:49:09] Ian Buck: Large city. Yeah.
[00:49:10] Greg Brick: And what they’ve done is, you know, you, you give ’em the lemons and they, you know, the, or the, you know, and they make the lemonade in, in sense that they’re using it for geothermal heating.
[00:49:21] Greg Brick: Okay. So what I thought, you know, in my sim in all my simplicity is the groundwater nerd. I thought, well, hey, maybe that just what you suggested there, so. I decided to call Xcel Energy. Mm-hmm. I wasn’t just gonna call the front desk. Mind you, I don’t find an engineer there or somebody who knew something.
[00:49:43] Greg Brick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, he was scathing. I was like, you know, when I said, Hey, did you know you’re, you know, you, this is, I tried to explain, sent to my, my copies of my studies and it, there’s, you know, potentially a large untapped. Source of heat here. And it’s like, you know, thank you very much. And that was it.
[00:50:04] Greg Brick: They would, I would not, you know, that that was it. They wouldn’t talk to me any further. I, you know, I suppose they have people calling them all the time with perpetual motion machine ideas and stuff.
[00:50:15] Ian Buck: And I mean, this isn’t like a crazy idea. There’s, isn’t there, there, there are, uh, you know. Community scale, uh, uh, geothermal projects going in, in like the Prospect Park neighborhood. Um, and, you know, and those, those are all new builds, so like, that’s why they’re able to do them, implement them like right now. But, um,
[00:50:37] Greg Brick: I, you know, I. Like I said, I tried to tell, I tried to bring some engineers in on this and get their opinion, and they were just, wouldn’t even talk to me about it. Mm-hmm. So I am, I’m hoping by, you know, talking to you and, you know, to, to alert people to this whole issue.
[00:50:56] Greg Brick: Mm-hmm. Um, you know, that, that. Like outbreaks of diarrheal illness that are unexplained. Well, maybe they’re, they’re, we, we’ve had this explanation for some years. We just did, you know, we, we need to look at this issue. Or in the case, you know, Hey, could we use this for geothermal heat, but like, do something here.
[00:51:17] Ian Buck: Right. You know, so. So call your city council members, I guess, and ask for something.
[00:51:24] Greg Brick: Yeah. You know, could, could you please warm me Geothermally here? I mean, could you
[00:51:30] Ian Buck: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, uh, yes, I mean, I think, I think that, you know, putting in data collection like infrastructure,
[00:51:39] Greg Brick: that’s the first step
[00:51:39] Ian Buck: would be the first step, right?
[00:51:41] Ian Buck: Yeah, it is.
[00:51:41] Greg Brick: Absolutely. Yeah. You don’t wanna. You don’t even wanna do it like a geothermal pilot project actually, unless you’ve actually done a study mm-hmm. To figure out, okay, here’s kinda like the edges of the warm, you know? Right. This really warm area. This is how much we’d have to recoup, uh, in a th you know, for in thermal terms, um, you know, in terms of BTUs and that sort of thing.
[00:52:08] Greg Brick: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, um, is this practical? And until we’ve done that, that kind of study that, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re not even at the point of, you know, looking at geothermal extraction of it or,
[00:52:23] Ian Buck: well, I’m a fan of data and, uh, so I, I would love to see this kind of thing studied more. Yeah.
[00:52:29] Greg Brick: I, I wish I were like, you know, if, if I were like at the beginning of my career and I knew this ahead of time, knew about this, that’s what I would, I would try to get a grant.
[00:52:41] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:52:42] Greg Brick: Supposing that the National Science Foundation isn’t eliminated in the next few days, uh, by
[00:52:49] Ian Buck: a lot of these things are probably gonna be up to the states. Yeah. Um, and, and honestly, I mean, it, it sounds like this is probably something that’s worth. Hmm. Taking a look at, in our major metro areas in, in Minnesota, you know, so having a state level grant to allow cities, you know, because we wanna know, is this not just Minneapolis or is, is this happening under the downtown areas of Duluth, Rochester, St. Paul, St. Cloud. Right?
[00:53:15] Greg Brick: Yeah. That this would be a great thing for legacy funding.
[00:53:19] Ian Buck: Well, I know that we do have a number of like university students who listen to this podcast, so if anybody feels inspired to go and do some some data collection,
[00:53:29] Greg Brick: talk to me. Yeah, know.
[00:53:30] Greg Brick: Mm-hmm.
[00:53:30] Greg Brick: I’ll tell you exactly. What you need to do. I mean, you, I on just in Schiek’s Cave alone, I can tell you that that right, right there would be a worthy dissertation topic and an, and an important one. Um, just, just to install data loggers down there and get a really good time series. You know, it’s a lengthening time of PhDs.
[00:53:53] Greg Brick: You know, you might get six, maybe eight, eight years, God forbid, eight years of data, but you know, at least several years worth of data enough to enough. So you start to see the seasonal trends that we see at these other big springs.
[00:54:07] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm.
[00:54:08] Greg Brick: Um, and I had, I believe I was starting to see, with the little data I collected, I was starting to see pieces of those seasonal trends in there in the data for the groundwater under Minneapolis.
[00:54:22] Greg Brick: It’s a, you know, just a, a fascinating subject and there might not be a Nobel Prize in it, but, um, certainly it, it’s a, to me, I mean, from everything I know, it’d be, uh, a very important study to make.
[00:54:38] Ian Buck: Well, Greg, we’re just about at an hour’s mark. Is there, are there any other final thoughts that you had on, on the topic?
[00:54:46] Greg Brick: As far as I can tell, basically we’re, we’re the, the, you know, our, our cities are sitting on the top of these aquifers that are just basically fermentation vessels of sewage and, and, uh, groundwater warm by the urban heat island effect. And, uh, I think. Especially here in the United States, we should know a lot more about that. We should. I mean, it’s temperature measurements are cheap, you know, you can do ’em for next. Mm-hmm. Like if you want to go measure PFAS parts per trillion, those are expensive lab. Um. Ah essays. Mm-hmm. Temperatures almost free for the taking. And it’s, and why not go out there and collect that data? Right.
[00:55:33] Greg Brick: Whether it’s, you know, to protect the public or to, to make use of it, you know, for a geothermal project, what have you.
[00:55:41] Ian Buck: Are we literally the frogs sitting in gradually heating up water?
[00:55:46] Greg Brick: Yeah. It’s gonna, it’s, it’s only that area of warmth is only going to expand. Mm-hmm. Yeah. As, as time goes on and. Uh, I guess expand in three dimensions.
[00:55:58] Greg Brick: It’s gonna go, uh, further out, I would guess. It extends that, you know, that heat island of that heated groundwork extends well beyond, uh, Nicolette Mall, the intensely heated water. Mm-hmm. Uh, and as far as the, you know, just the, the mildly elevator that you’re seeing that way out in the suburbs mm-hmm.
[00:56:18] Greg Brick: That already, you’re seeing that already way out in the, you know, quite just, uh, from the distant from the core.
[00:56:24] Ian Buck: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, not nice, but you know, it
[00:56:27] Greg Brick: it, it is, it is a fascinating problem though. And, and you can, I mean, even if you’re into the mathematics, I know people would just really get into the mathematics of heat conduction and fourier series and all this stuff.
[00:56:41] Greg Brick: Look, looking at this and Yeah. And, and thermal conduction and um, uh, you know, for a physicist even, there’s a lot of stuff to look at in there, and. But for me, it’s just the wonder of these eye popping groundwater temperatures that I just have never seen anywhere else in the state. And there’s one person who should know what the groundwater temperature should be, it’s me. Mm-hmm. Given how many thousands of springs I’ve measured.
[00:57:11] Ian Buck: Yeah. Well, we’ve got our work cut out for us, I suppose. So yeah. Greg, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:57:18] Greg Brick: Well, thanks for having me.
[00:57:20] Ian Buck: And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Streets.MN Podcast. Okay. About the whole undisclosed location thing?
[00:57:29] Ian Buck: Yes, I am moving again, and if you want to know more about how I chose my new neighborhood and how I moved all of my furniture by bike, I’m working on a couple of non podcast posts that will appear on Streets.mn In the near future. So keep an eye on the website. This show is released under a creative commons attribution, non-commercial, non derivative license.
[00:57:52] Ian Buck: So feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it and you are not profiting from it. The music in this episode is by Eric Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet. This episode was edited by Sherry Johnson, hosted by me, Ian R. Buck, and was transcribed by Stina Neel. We are always looking to feature new voices on the Streets.mn Podcast.
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