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School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
The earliest detailed technical descriptions of British mining practices still in existence (which date from the late 17th and early 18th centuries) dedicate many paragraphs to the problems posed by the unwanted ingress of ground water into underground workings. Excessive water in working areas seriously hinders production. More importantly, sudden inrushes of ground water to underground workings are a significant mortal hazard. In view of the problems experienced with water ingress to workings, the main preoccupations of the early mining engineers were utterly practical, focusing on the efficient removal of water which could not be prevented from entering the workings (by simple bailing, by adit drainage or by pumping), and on efforts to minimize water ingress in the first place (by the use of tubbing in shafts and the use of rock barriers and dams in working areas). Occasionally, the mining engineers took time to reflect upon the origins of the water they encountered in their work. In their writings we find some of the earliest accurate conceptualizations of issues of ground water origin, driving heads, hydraulic gradients (including vertical upward gradients) and natural heterogeneities in water quality. So successful were these early mining engineers in their endeavours that they bequeathed most of the technological basis for the development of large-scale public-supply ground water abstractions, and much of the basis for the geotechnical control of ground water during construction projects, from about 1820 onwards. By the late 19th Century, mining engineers concerned with ground water management became gradually isolated once more within their own specialist domain, where they went on to develop a vernacular hydrogeology of their own, replete with its own key concepts and vocabulary. Nevertheless, occasional interchanges of experience between mining and the water industry have continued to enrich both sectors down to the present day.
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