SB16 "Vermin" Guzzler Water Haul, 2023
SB16 Vermin Water Haul, May 19th & 20th, 2023
By Scott Gibson
The “Vermin” guzzler is located on the western end of the Old Dad Mountains within the Mojave National Preserve. This legacy water development consists of three (3) upright plastic tanks manifolded to a “New Mexico” style drinker box. Rainwater is collected in a slick rock canyon check dam and then piped to the tanks. While many areas of the Mojave desert received rain last season, the Vermin system did not collect enough water. Neal Darby, from the National Park Service at the Preserve contacted me during the spring of 2023 to let the Society know about the water conditions. Neal and his team continued to monitor the system. As summer was approaching fast, we made the call to provision Vermin with a water haul on May 19th and 20th.
Our advance crew met at Camp Cady Wildlife Area to load equipment on Friday afternoon, May 19th. Once we loaded Big Red, we convoyed to the National Park Service (NPS) maintenance yard in Baker. There we filled our totes with water then headed to the guzzler. Out in the Old Dads, we met up with some new volunteers who would help us string hose. This was there first project with SCBS, and this is not an easy one to break in new people. Ricky Gardnias, Victoria Franco and Daniel Panattoni were excited to get to work. That first Friday, we strung out approximately 1800’ or half the hose. We also set up the 3000-gallon bladder tank and discharged our tanks to start filling it up.
Early on Saturday morning, I woke up before the rest of the crew to make breakfast burritos. With enough burritos to feed the hose crew left at camp, I brought the balance with me back to the water fill point in Baker. At 07:00, the balance of the water haulers arrived and we filled all our water tanks. While we were loading with water, the hose crew, back at Vermin finished laying the ½-mile of hose.
As each truck filled with water, we began making the hour long 4x4 trek to the Vermin site. Each truck discharged it’s load of water in the bladder tank. When the bladder was full, the Wajax Pump was started up and pumping operations began. We were able to finish pumping a little after noon, a new record for us. With left over water in some of the trucks, Neal Darby led a crew to the “New Vermin” tank site. We rolled up the hose and loaded all equipment to depart the site by 3:00 PM.
Highlights: 4,275-gallons of water pumped to SB16 Vermin.
1,925-gallons delivered to SB67 New Vermin
Approximately 3,300-feet of firehose used with a total weight of nearly 1,200 pounds.
The WaterAxe pumped for 2-hours and 6-minutes, yielding a flow rate of ~31 gpm.
High temperature of 102*F with a low temperature was 67*F.
We had a thunderstorm with lightning, rain and winds on Friday night.
We had some new volunteers, who seemed to enjoy the project and I think will be back.