BUFFALO - A long missile-shaped tube with the word RESOLVE painted in black letters will zig-zag about 100 feet off the ground in northeast Wyoming during the next week. Those who see it up close can duck or run for cover, but it won't be necessary.

The tube comes from Canada and it's harmless.

"RESOLVE" is the name given to a very modernized water-witching device employed by the U.S. National Energy Technology Laboratory. It sniffs out underground water networks by sensing electromagnetic conductivity.

The device will be used to map a total of 46 square miles of Mother Nature's underground plumbing in select areas of the Powder River Basin. The mapping will be made available to the public and to coalbed methane gas regulators so they can better identify where infiltration ponds and other systems for handling coalbed methane water would be best located.

But the laboratory's first order of business is to let people know that the missile-shaped remote sensing device slung from a rented helicopter is no missile at all. In this age of terror alerts, it's necessary to let people know exactly what the U.S. government is flying over their heads.

"We don't want anybody shooting at it or anything," Terry Ackman, of NETL, said Wednesday during a news conference at the Johnson County Airport.

"We don't want anybody to think there are terrorists or anything. This is a scientific experiment."

The $150,000 water mapping project is financed by the National Petroleum Technology Office, which is another division of the U.S. Department of Energy. It has commissioned Fugro Airborne Surveys of Toronto, Canada, to perform the survey.

"What we are trying to do here is map water," Ackman said.

There are about 15,000 coalbed methane gas wells in the basin now and the industry is poised to drill about 35,000 more in the next 10 years. It's important for regulators to know exactly where underground water formations are, how they are interconnected and where they flow because each coalbed methane gas well pumps water from the coal aquifer to coax the methane to the wellhead. It is this produced water that must be dealt with on the surface.

So far, the water is predominantly dumped untreated on the surface and allowed flow into existing drainage channels.

In some areas, particularly on the western side of the basin, the water has a fairly high sodium absorption ratio (SAR) and does not work well for downstream irrigators.

The Bureau of Land Management, which is the predominant mineral owner and sets many of the primary rules for development in the area, has chosen infiltration ponds as the main method of handling the water for future development.

Richard Zander, assistant field manager at the BLM Buffalo Field Office, said NETL's water mapping will provide the "big picture" of what is actually taking place in the basin's underground aquifer system.

"If we go to infiltration ponds, we don't really have answers right now as to where the water will drain," Zander said.

Fugro's 6-frequency electrical conductivity sensor will to provide 3-dimensional pictures of the underground water network down to 300 feet. And because it senses water by its electrical conductivity, it will also provide information about the quality of the water.

Scientists typically measure the water's "EC" to determine how well it might mix with surface soils, waters and vegetation.

The NETL survey will focus on six areas of the basin that represent a cross-section of different stages of development and varied terrain. The areas include an existing production field in northern Sheridan County, areas near Ucross, Leiter and the Big George production area near the Johnson County and Campbell County border.

Ackman said the air survey will be followed by a more detailed ground survey, and the whole process will be done again in two years to monitor the groundwater movement.

Ackman said results of the mapping will be made available at NETL's Web site (www.netl.doe.gov).