The Tecolote Tunnel Mystery

By Dave Palmer

In the 1950s, flooding impeded construction of the

Tecolote Tunnel through the Santa Ynez Mountains. By its
composition and the depth at which it was encountered, the
13 million gallons a day was not rainwater. Some of the water
was hot, as much as 117F, and mineralized, some was cool and
exceedingly pure. The flows were stopped so construction of the
six-mile long tunnel to connect Santa Barbara to the Cachuma
Reservoir could continue.
The irony of the situation was not lost for one Foothill
Boulevard resident, mining engineer Stephan Riess. Riess knew
the origin of the water encountered. Indeed, he had similar
experiences and turned his life around to understand such
occurrences.1
Riess first encounter with primary water happened in
the 1930s. While working in a deep mine in the Sierra Nevada,
a load of dynamite set off to break up rock at the bottom of the
mine started a flood of water apparently coming from nowhere.
By its temperature and purity, the flow, over 36 million gallons a
day, was not ground water. The question of where the water was
coming from was made more mysterious because the mine was
nearly at the top of the mountain range.2
Puzzled by what he witnessed and not finding any
explanation in his textbooks, Riess took up his own study.
He consulted with scientists and traveled around the world
visiting natural springs and mines. A lot of information was
circulating during those times. A paper by Professor Adolf Erik
Nordenskiold concluded that water was formed deep within the
earth and could be contacted in hard rock.3 A treatise on water
by Josiah Edward Spurr stated that it had been long recognized
that water was an essential component of magma, clearly
shown by the presence of steam in volcanic eruptions.4 Some
of the very large springs Riess became aware of in the United
States included a spring in Missouri that flows at 800 million
gallons a day, a spring in Oregon at 690 million gallons a day, and
a series of springs along the Snake River in Idaho that flow at
over 3.5 billion gallons a day.5
He listened to travelers tales about ancient springs that
laid the basis for ancient civilizations and he visited castles on
trips to Europe. Castles were commonly situated on high rocky
promontories and supplied with fresh water from wells hewn
in hard rock. The wells typically were two meters in diameter
over 200 meters deep. La Ferriere, a stone fortress high above
the Haitian plain built in the early 19th century, is an example
of siting on a rock water source. It is supplied by a well that is
deep, cold, and fed by an inexhaustible spring.6
Riess knew that most mines were flooded out before they
were worked out and that most working mines are pumping
huge amounts of water. This is common knowledge in the
mining industry. Famous examples include the big ones: the
Comstock and the Tombstone. The Comstock in Virginia City,
Nevada, was mined while pumps pulled 5 million gallons of
water a day. When the pumps failed in 1886, the mine flooded
in less than two days. The Tombstone in Arizona was worked
while de-watering at 2.3 million gallons a day. In 1909 the mine
was closed when a boiler breakdown shut down the drainage
system and the entire complex flooded beyond redemption.7

Riess stumbled into another clue, again in a mine in

the United States. While working late one night he heard a
hissing sound coming from a ball-mill that crushes ore into
mud. Turned off for the night, Riess was surprised to see
water coming out of the bottom of the mill and gas bubbling
up through the mud. Riess believed he was witnessing virgin
water being created by the crystallization processes within the
rocks perhaps in interaction with the chemicals used in the mill.
Later he duplicated what he witnessed in the
laboratory.8
He concluded that new water is continually released
during the process of rock formation. Briefly, magma in motion
deep within the earth produces mineral-bearing gases, steam,
and water that are forced up into the fractured overlaying
crystalline rock. This new water deposits its minerals and
migrates through rock fissures underground that Riess called
natures own pipelines. To locate these veins, Riess learned
to observe the surface topography. An important surface
feature is a contact zone, a place where two different kinds
of rock adjoin a natural fissure. An example is an overlaying
layer of sedimentary rock, with an underlying igneous rock,
such as basalt, forced up through it. The new water comes up
in these fissures between sedimentary and crystalline rock.
Riess determined that this water is always in motion and moves
between its gas, liquid, and mineral states. It is free of leach
minerals, pollution, and safe from nuclear fallout. Primary water
is available all over the world. The supply will last as long as the
earth is active.9
Riess first opportunity to try his theory came in 1934
while working for Herbert Hoover and his sons. A mine in
Nelson, Nevada, needed water to make it profitable. Reiss
offered to drill a well into hard rock. Because the owners were
so skeptical and were wary of the ridicule that would surely
accompany a drilling rig being brought in, Reiss instead had a
shaft chiseled out of the hard rock. After weeks of digging, he
struck water at 182 feet. The water rose so quickly to within six
feet of the surface that the workmen barely had the time to get
out of the shaft with their tools. It tested continuously for weeks
with no drawdown. The well, and the mine, was a spectacular
success.10
Eager to recreate his success, Riess purchased a property
in Simi Valley where he was sure he could find water. His first
well, drilled in 1934, could do 1,200 gpm with no drawdown.11
In 1953 he added a couple of more wells that, in total, supplied
3,000 gpm. Independently verified for 18 months, the 80 ft. x
200 ft. property sold for one million dollars in 1955 making it
one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in California at
that time.12
Riess went on to drill hundreds of successful wells into
hard rock.13 Most of his wells are in Southern California. A well
he drilled in Camarillo in 1945 saved a fledgling nursery. By
1953 the well was still reliably producing at 700 gpm with no
drawdown.14 In 1955, an Anza Valley farmer was desperate for
water after drilling a few dry holes including a professionallyadvised well that yielded only four gpm. Riess had the farmer
cut a road to a level spot on top of a small granite hill, causing
quite a commotion. Onlookers were amazed when Riess struck

water at 302 feet. The completed well, drilled in hard rock,

tested continuously for over a month at 400 gpm. In 1959, Riess
was invited to Israel to locate water. He drilled a well in solid
granite in the Negev desert that supplied a city of over 100,000
people. The exceptionally high quality water had only 1/6th the
dissolved solids compared to other wells in the area. For his
service, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion presented Riess with a
medal. Later in 1959 Riess drilled a well for the San Bernardino
Municipal Water District in Yucaipa. Drilled into solid granite, it
delivered 600 gpm.15
By Riess own admission, he added little to the theory; he
just made it practical.16 The information he was using was far
from new.
Around that same time engineers in Santa Barbara were
tunneling through the Santa Ynez, a French engineer and expert
on the origin of water in crystalline rock, Professor C. Louis
Kervran, was encountering the same thing. In fact, he knew of so
many casesthousandsin which tunneling into mountain rock
caused sudden floods, some which wiped out the construction
sites, that he didnt bother to collect data on them.17

The Tecolote Tunnel experience was neither mysterious
nor unique to those familiar with primary water. The tunnel
tapped into a self-sustaining permanent source of exceptionally
pure new water from deep within the earth.

Rocks Make Water

School children are taught that the Earth has a finite
amount of water that cycles from the rain to the rivers
to the ocean where it evaporates to become rain again.
Notwithstanding that the Earth is bombarded with tons of ice
comets every day, the theory is resoundingly false.
There is a reason why the Earth is sometimes called the
water planet in ancient texts. Evidence throughout recorded
history that shows that water is formed within the Earth.
Anaxagoras (500 428 BCE) stated that the oceans were filled
by rivers and by waters of the Earth. He said the rivers were
also from the water of the Earth. Plato and Aristotle said water
was formed within the Earth. Vitruvius in his Ten Books on
Architecture, published between 27 17 BCE, said water was
best found in rocks.
Castles in Europe were commonly situated on high rocky
promontories. Typical were center courtyards with stone wells
about 2 meters in diameter and 200 meters or more in depth.
These wells supplied water for centuries. One example is the
fortress on the Inner Farne islet in Scotland. In 1952 when a
National Geographic journalist visited he nearly fell into a large
cistern filled with ice-cold water.
La Ferriere, a stone fortress high above the Haitian plain
built in the early 19th century,is another example of siting on
a rock water source. It is supplied by a well that is deep, cold,
and fed by an inexhaustible spring. Ain-es-Sultan, The Sultans
Spring, in Palestine has supplied water since Neolithic times.
At Cyrene in northeastern Libya the famous Fountain of Apollo
still comes forth from a tunnel hewn in rock just as it has for
well over 2,000 years. The enormous spring at Zaghouan outside
the ancient city of Carthage was the source for the bountiful
Algerian and Tunisian grain harvests under Roman rule for over
three centuries. It still flows through a Roman temple in the
Atlas Mountains.

The Ain Figeh Spring in Syria supplies the entire

population of Damascus and is the principal source of the
Barada River. The spring flows out of a limestone formation and
has been enclosed in a structure since Roman times. The flow
averages about 132,000 gallons per minute (gpm). The quality
is excellent. The temperature of 14C and pH of 7.9 are nearly
constant and bacteria is virtually nonexistent at the source.
The Fertile Crescent, which stretches from Israel to the
Persian Gulf and includes the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in
modern Iraq, is supplied at its easternmost point by a cave in an
iron-red limestone cliff. This flow becomes the Jordan River. At
its westernmost point are springs. One flows from the foot of
a buttress on Mt. Hermon and another pours from the cliffs in
waterfalls.
The tapping of rock water, also called primary water, in
earlier times demonstrates a knowledge of our living planet
that is uncommon today. Yet water still flows from rocks when
tapped unintentionally, as the mining industry repeatedly
discovers. A lot of mines are washed out before they are worked
out, and most working mines are pumping huge amounts of
water.
The Comstock silver mine complex in Virginia City, Nevada
was mined while pumps pulled over 5 million gallons of water a
day. In 1886 the pumps failed and in less than 2 days water filled
the entire lower workings of the 4 mines and miles of crosscuts.
The Tombstone mine in Arizona reopened in 1905 when dewatering was successfully pulling 2.3 million gallons of water
a day. In 1909 the mine was closed for the last time when a
boiler breakdown shut down the drainage system and the entire
complex flooded beyond redemption.
Another interesting case of water from rocks happened in
1955 in New York. During the excavation for an addition to the
Harlem Hospital copious amounts of water were encountered
at only 12 feet. For construction to continue water was
pumped continuously for over a year at 2,200 gpm. The water
maintained a constant temperature, even in winter, and was
very pure. Over a billion gallons of water were pumped until
the 12 story building being erected on the site became heavy
enough to hold down the foundation against the hydrostatic
pressure. Establishment geologists couldnt explain it and never
mention it. Yet the source has been known for millennia.
In the 19th century, Adolf Erik Nordenskiold, a professor
of mineralogy, began to study primary water. He was inspired
by his father, the Chief of Mining in Finland, who told him that
iron mines along the Finnish coast were never penetrated by
sea water, but always had fresh water present. During the last
part of the century, Nordenskiold was finding water by drilling
into promontories and rocky islands off the Swedish coast. He
concluded that water was formed deep within the earth and
could be contacted in hard rock.
He wrote a
paper called About Drilling for Water in Primary Rocks which
earned him a Nobel prize nomination.
In the 20th century the same natural phenomenon was
stumbled upon by Stephan Riess. Riess, a Bavarian mining
engineer, emigrated to California in 1923. Shortly after arriving
in the Sierra Mountains, he came upon a mining operation
with an ore processing problem. He solved their problem and
became famous almost overnight. Herbert Hoover invited Riess
to join in his metallurgical processing firm. This led to Riess
first encounter with primary water. It happened while he was

working in a deep mine. A load of dynamite set off to break

up rock at the bottom of the mine started a flood of water
apparently coming from nowhere. Pumps with a combined
rate of 25,000 gpm did not abate the influx. The temperature
and purity of the water indicated it was not ground water. The
question of where the water was coming from was made more
mysterious since the mine was nearly at the top of the mountain
range. When Riess could find no explanation for the anomaly in
textbooks he began his own study.
Reiss studied castles on trips to Europe and listened
intently to travelers stories of ancient wells in the Middle East.
Back in the United States, while working in a mine late at night,
he heard a hissing sound that was accompanied by trickling
water. The source of the sound was a ball-mill that crushes ore
into mud. Turned off for the night, Riess was surprised to see
water coming out of the bottom of the mill, and gas bubbling
up through the mud. Riess believed he was witnessing virgin
water being liberated from rock created by the crystallization
processes within the rocks and possibly due in part to the
interaction of the chemical catalysts used in the mill. Later he
duplicated what he witnessed in the laboratory. He concluded
that water was continually manufactured in rock strata deep
in the earth where the temperatures and pressures were
conducive. This primary water was then forced up into rock
fissures where it could be tapped.
Riess got his first opportunity to prove his theories at a
mine near Nelson, Nevada in 1934. Water was needed to make
the mine profitable. Because the owners, Herbert Hoover and
his sons, were so skeptical, and to avoid the ridicule that would
surely accompany a drilling rig being brought in, Reiss instead
had a shaft chiseled out of the hard rock. After weeks of digging,
he struck water at 182 feet the water quickly rising to within 6
feet of the surface. Pumped continuously for weeks, there was
no drawdown. The well was a spectacular success and provided
plentiful water for over ten years until the mine was shut down.
When re-opened in 1977, the well was used again. Riess was
confident he could recreate his success at Nelson.
Riess learned to look for restricted faults or breaks in the
earths crust. Such breaks rarely reach the surface. Where they
do great natural springs of primary water occur. One example is
the spring in Kings Canyon National Park. It is above all drainage
and pours forth at thousands of gallons per minute. Riess
method begins with a detailed study of the surface topography.
One key is to locate contact zones places where two different
kinds of rock strata adjoin a natural fissure. An example of this
is an overlaying layer of sedimentary rock with an underlying
igneous rock, such as basalt, forced up through it. The resulting
surface formation is called a dyke. Water comes up from deep
within the earth in these fissures between sedimentary and
crystalline rock. If the fissure has a displacement, the water
can be contacted far from the dyke. It can also flow in lateral
channels great distances. A thorough understanding of the
geology is necessary. Such surface protrusions are common in
many places in the world.
One such place is Simi Valley, California where Riess
purchased a small plot of land in Black Canyon. His first well
there flooded the local railroad track. His three wells combined
provided 3,000 gpm and fed a lush garden and pool.

Riess, again popular, was contracted to find water

locally. The Sinaloa Ranch was subdivided after Reiss found
water sufficient for suburban development. Rancho Dos Vientos
increased in value fivefold when Riess drilled two wells that
provided enough water to fill a small lake. Dr. John C. Campbells
lemon orchard was supplied with water during an extended
drought. Another orchard was saved by two wells each of which
produced over 400 gallons per minute. A well for Candido Ivaro
saved his fledgling operation pumped at 550 gpm because
thats all the pump could do it had no drawdown.
Word of Riess wells raised the ire of the Water Resources
Division (WRD). He was finding water while they were saying
that there was no water and advocating elaborate bring-it-infrom-far-away water projects. The WRD was feeling some public
pressure. A 1953 article in Fortnight magazine spotlighted Riess
69 successful wells and attacked the WRD. A slander campaign
against Reiss ensued. In 1955, the undeniable integrity of Riess
work was validated by Clint Murchison, a Texas oil millionaire,
who, after testing Riess wells in Simi Valley for 18 months, paid
one million dollars for the 80 ft. x 200 ft. plot of land, making it
one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in California at
that time.
News of the sale inspired the Sparkletts water company
president, Burton Arnds, to seek help from Riess. His six month
old, WRD-advised wells at the Lakeside bottling plant, that
initially brought in 100 gpm, were yielding increasingly harder
water and drying up. Riess found water by deepening one of the
dry wells. The high-quality water flowed at 300 gpm. Twentytwo years later, in 1977, Riess revisited the site. His well had
been continuously producing at the same rate the whole time; a
nearby second well he had drilled as an emergency back-up had
never been used.
The WRD stepped up their attack. One attacker was
University of California geologist Dr. John F. Mann, Jr. The
confrontation sparked an inquiry by the Chief of the Pacific
News Bureau of the Christian Science Monitor, Kimmis
Hendrick. Hendrick learned that Mann had recommend a well
to an Anza Valley farmer that yielded only 4 gpm. He told Riess
about it. Riess had the farmer cut a road to a level spot on top
of a small granite hill. News of the activity brought WRD officials
to the site. They warned the land owner not to drill. Riess struck
water at 302 feet. Sabotage to the drilling operation delayed
drilling for two days. The completed well, drilled in hard rock,
tested continuously for over a month at 400 gpm.
Riess, now internationally famous, was invited to Israel in
1959 where he received a medal for drilling a well that supplied
a city of over 100,000 people. The water had only 1/6th the
dissolved solids compared to other wells in the area.
Riess work was stymied by California Governor Edmund
G. Pat Brown. During the political movement to create the
California Aqueduct, Riess contracted with the San Bernardino
Municipal Water District to bring water to the entire county.
The contract was for seven million dollars, a small fraction of
amount the Aqueduct would cost the county. Riess first well
was in Yucaipa and, drilled into solid granite, delivered 600 gpm.
The Countys acceptance was blocked by the Governor. Riess did
the work at his expense ($200,000) and sued three times before
winning his claim to recover his expenses. Reiss took his story
to United States Senate in 1959, only to incite still more attacks
from the WRD.

By this time, though, Riess wasnt the only public

proponent of tapping primary water produced in rock. There
were others. Michael Salzman, a former engineer with the
U.S. Navys Hydrographic Office and the first to translate
Nordenskiolds essay in English, wrote a book, New Water for a
Thirsty World, after years of studying Riess work.
In France, Professor C. Louis Kervran wrote an essay in
1977 on the origin of water in crystalline rock. He knew that
most of the wells in his native Brittany were found by dowsers
and dug into solid granite. In his career he knew of so many
cases where tunneling into rock created copious floods that
wiped out the construction sites that he didnt bother to collect
data on them. During a drought in 1976 the French Geological
and Mining Bureau loaned drilling equipment to find water in
the region. Successful wells were drilled into crystalline and
metamorphic terrain.
During his research, Kervran got a peak inside the KatellRoc S.A. wells in France. Katell-Roc was bottling pure, almost
mineral-free water. Kervran toured three wells each about 30
meters in diameter and 9 meters deep, hewn in solid granite.
The wells are fed by a fissure only millimeters in width, yet they
refill each day. The composition of the water is significantly
different than the rainwater wells in the region.
Water from deep within the earth is free of leach
minerals, pollution, and safe from nuclear fallout. Stephan Riess
concluded that water is always in motion and moves between
its gas, liquid, and mineral states. He determined that water is
constantly being created in rocks by electrochemical conditions
deep within the earth, where rocks become fluid, and flows in
fissures underground that he called natures own pipelines.
High quality new water is available all over the world.

Notes
1 Stephan Riess, address to the Select Committee on National Water
Resources of the U.S. Senate, 16 Oct. 1959.
2 Christopher Bird, Primary Water, Alternate Energy Seminar,
Atlanta, Feb. 1983.
3 A. E. Nordenskiold, About Drilling for Water in Primary Rocks, trans.
Michael H. Salzman.
4 Bird, Primary.
5 Riess.
6 Christopher Bird, The Divining Hand (1979; Atglen: Schiffer, 1993)
150-152.
7 Bird, Divining 154-155.
8 Bird, Divining 150.
9 Riess.
10 Bird, Divining 154.
11 Revolution in Water-Seeking, Part I Fortnight 31 Aug. 1953: 10.
12 Joe Paul, Jr., Riess Sells Water Wells for $1,000,000. Ventura
County Star-Free Press 30 Sept. 1955.
13 Bird, Primary.
14 Revolution in Water-Seeking, Part II Fortnight 14 Sept. 1953: 19.
15 Bird, Divining 163-170.
16 Revolution, Part I 12.
17 Bird, Divining 158-160.

More information: www.PrimaryWaterInstitute.org