"Now that I think about it," he quipped, "I used to tangle almost every day in fifth grade with a kid that looked just like you. Seriously, Troy, I've got a wild idea and I want to try it out on you before I hit Jordan or The Scourge with it."
Troy leaned back and put his feet on the desk and listened.
"Actually, this is a little out of our line," Alec continued slowly, "but something we did up in the hills day before yesterday brought this on. The idea stems from the way we excavated that gauge, yet it calls for an entirely different idea and technique.
"Now I haven't the slightest idea how bad Spokima is cracked or just where the crack is, but I think there may be a way to recover some of the lost water. And if it works, it might be used on Moses Lake and McNary."
He paused and pulled a pad of scratch paper towards him and brought out a pen to make rough sketches. Troy swung his feet off the desk and leaned forward to watch.
"The idea came to me," Alec said, continuing to sketch, "from the runoff trough you cut to carry off the snow melt from around the hot box. Now just suppose that the crack in the reservoir is along the bottom side, although that doesn't really make much difference ... yet it might make the operation a little easier since it would concentrate the leak runoff.
"We know the reservoir is set in the bed of the Columbia from the confluence of the Spokane River down to old Grand Coulee. And we know just what the strata formations are both below the reservoir and in the aquifer downstream. That lost water is going into that strata and is going to work its way down the slope of the terrain but it's also going to level off on the first bedrock strata it hits and that's where I think we can stop it.
"If we ran a deep and big enough bore down ahead of the flow and cut a catch basin and then dropped a series of pumps into the basin, I think we could save a lot of that water by getting back onto the surface."
Troy studied the sketch for a minute. "How are you going to sink a bore that fast?"
"Laser," Alec replied simply.