Ed Stillman
Met Ed Stillman once in May 2005 at the Can Am Dowsers Conference in Issaquah Washington. He was a professional engineer from San Francisco who moved to Arizona when he retired. Then he took up a new career of water dowsing in a state with a lot of desert. He was good at finding water and soon he was in demand. Susan Collins says he is still dowsing in his eighties and in good shape.
He told us about the difficulties of Arizona well drilling and showed the geotechnical diagrams he created locating underground streams and stratigraphy. The diagrams were like those generated my mining engineers showing an ore body after drilling a hundred bore holes and doing thousands of rock assays. Ed did not drill any holes. He dowsed. When the well driller followed Ed’s instructions they found potable water and confirmation of the types of rock through which they had to drill.
Ed told us about a small strata of four houses on the west side of the San Francisco Peaks north of Flagstaff. They needed at least 20 gallons per minute water flow for the combined use of the four homes. Dowsing he found three underground streams but they had brackish water. At 960 feet there was potable water in the quantities needed but six feet below the clean water was a layer of impermeable rock and below that was salty water. His instructions to the driller was to stop at 960 feet and go no further. The driller knowing Ed’s good track record did that. The four home owners were happy.
Another project in the Salt River Valley between Phoenix and Yuma was four a community. The twenty million dollar project would only get funding if there was water. There was a lot of pressure on Ed to find water. Under that sort of pressure dowsing is more difficult. It is hard to be in the meditative detached state needed for good dowsing. Ed needed 100 gallons per minute minimum year round. He spent a lot of time on this project and his underground mapping was spectacular. He found the water in sufficient quality and quantities. He showed slides of the well and the developed community. The Salt River Valley is salty and there was an extra challenge of avoiding salt beds and salty underground streams. The community is happy Ed found good water.
Ed Stillman is a P. Eng and a P.D. a Professional Dowser.
Glen