NPC: Badea Ion

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Due to multiple options when speaking, text below may not be in comprehensive order.

You see a middle aged man, apparently trying to measure the neEL-DB.comarby area. As you get closer to him, he nods his head at you.

Who are you?

I am Badea Ion. I just started my work in this area, so a lot of people are asking who I am; they don't see new faces too often.

Job

I am an engineer, working as a contractor. Kalana, the mayor of Corren, hired me to look for ways to convert some of the desert to arable land. Corren and even Portland could benefit a lot from this project. The key in this project is, of course, a proper irrigation system.

Irrigation

Well, yes, irrigation. Bringing water from somewhere else and dumping it in the desert. The problem is, the 'somewhere else' is kind of far. One possibility is to dig some deep well, but there are some issues with that. Another option is using the water from the swampy area in Morcraven March. But for this I'd need much more money than currently allocated for the project.

Issues

One issue with digging deep wells is that I am not sure how deep the phreatic surface is. From my estimations, it can't be closer than 100 meters, and could be as deep as 300 meters. Another problem is that sand is not an ideal material to dig through. It has a tendency to colapse so we must use reinforced tubular walls. They are very expensive and hard to come by. Assuming those two issues are solved

More
two more problems remain. First, we don't know how much water is in there. We need a lot of it, and if we run out of water in a year or two, all the effort would be in vain. And last but not the least, to get the water out we'll need pumps. And pumps need lot of energy, and I am not sure how we can provide this much energy around the clock.

Why not use the river?

The river here is contaminated with salt water from the ocean. As you can see if you look at the continent map, there are two ends. So it is not really flowing into the ocean, the ocean is flowing into it too. So there is no way to use it for irrigation purposes, unless if we build a desalination station, which is not practical.

New

I am originally from Irinveron, quite some distance from here. While Irinveron is a nice city, it is a bit too cold for my taste. And since my expertese is irrigation and land management, icy EL-DB.comterrain is not really good for my business. I traveled along both continents helping with all kind of projects involving water. Too much or too little water, both are problems I can help with.

Morcraven Marsh

Well, Morcraven Marsh is a swampy area, so a lot of their land is not good for agriculture. They have extra water, and we need more water, so ideally we would just transfer their water by big underground pipes. We would need some pumps, and some energy to power them, but less energy than a pump to bring the water from a well. And unlike the well idea, this would help both Corren and MM.

Not practical

We can construct a desalination station here, although it is pretty expensive. We can even use some mirrors to concentrate the heat and desalinate the water for free. But there is no way we can get enough volume to irrigate an area bigger than a 50-100 square meters. And for the effort and money involved, there are better alternatives.

Pipes

The pipes would have to start from Morcraven March, pass through Portland, then surface somehwere around here, on the Desert Pines side. They would go in almost a straight line, except that they will have to go around the mountains. But first I need to get the permission from the Portland and Morcraven Marsh people.

Permission

The installation of those pipes takes some time and digging, and some people might not like that. And if a pipe breaks while it is underground, it has the potential to case some small scale flooding that can damage the neaerby buildings, crops and roads. I don't think this would happen, but I can't guarantee they will never break.

Goodbye

It was nice talking to you. Now I'll go back to my work.