17 APRIL 2021 WorldWide Drilling Resource® www.starironworks.com 257 Caroline Street Punxsutawney, PA 15767 800-927-0560 • 814-427-2555 Fax: 814-427-5164 SERVING THE WATER WELL INDUSTRY Serving the Drilling Industry Rasmussen cont’d on page 20. by Tim Rasmussen Bentonite. To most people this is an unknown product. It is sold in Walmart as a beauty aid. It is available for sealing ponds for landscapers, used in construction projects, and is even touted as a laxative. We use it for sealing surface water away from our wells. We have been importing pallets of it into Guatemala for 15 years, with never a problem, until this year. When the second container finally made it into the port in Puerto Barrios and the customs officials began looking over the manifest with its list of items in the container, they spotted the pallets of bentonite and asked Berny for the license to import this “environmentally sensitive” material. Water For Life did not have one. The customs official frowned and said it could not be imported without the license. Berny mentioned we had imported it before without a license and asked if the law was new. The official simply shrugged, waived his hand dismissively, and told Berny that Water For Life had to have a license. Berny asked how to get a license, and the answer was more of the same hand waving and shoulder shrugs. The customs official told Berny the container could not move any further in the import process until this “problem” was resolved. We learned a long time ago the emergence of any “problem” in the import phase could usually be solved by the proper application of green material, but the matter had to be handled very delicately. It turned out to be the same with the bentonite. WTR
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDk4Mzk=