[Vision2020] goundwater

[French]

Here is an article from the Great Lakes area that has some parallels to our situation.  As the reader can see, even where there seems to be plenty of water, drinking water can be scarce.

Dianne French

NY Times
August 12, 2005

Growth Stirs a Battle to Draw More Water From the Great Lakes

By FELICITY BARRINGER


WAUKESHA, Wis. - Time was when Waukesha's mineral-rich water was coveted by Milwaukeeans and Chicagoans, who scorned the Lake Michigan water lapping at their shores. In 1892, one speculator even tried to pipe the city's water to Chicago for the coming World's Columbia Exposition, until aroused Waukeshans trained pistols, pitchforks and fire hoses on the pipe layers, who retreated.

What a difference a century makes. Waukesha has sucked so much water from its deep aquifer that it is now looking to the vast blue expanse of Lake Michigan, just as Chicagoans once eyed its water.

But the authorities who control some of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world are not sure that any of it should go to communities like Waukesha, which is 15 miles from the lake's shore but outside of its watershed.

Their fear is that without strict rules on who gets Great Lakes water and who does not, water-starved western cities will eventually knock at the door.

"Today the economics are not there to say we're going to take all the water in the Great Lakes and ship it to Phoenix and Vegas," said Todd Ambs, the water division director of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. "But water's not getting cheaper. Twenty-five, 30, 40 years from now, the economics are going to be different. We've got to have a system in place to deal with that."

Fights over who owns and who deserves water have long been a part of life in arid states like California and Nevada. But as the spread of exurbia has more than consumed the savings of a generation's worth of technological improvements like low-flush toilets, even places not perennially in danger of running dry have become jealous of their water.

Akron, Ohio, had to ask for Great Lakes water in the late 1990's. It received permission, but Lowell, Ind., was turned down.

And Michigan has told a Nestlé subsidiary that if it wants to increase production of its Ice Mountain bottled water in Mecosta Township, Mich., all of the additional water pumped out of the ground must be "delivered and sold within the Great Lakes basin." The company is fighting the requirement in federal court.

In the last 25 years, ideas have been suggested to build a slurry pipe that would send Great Lakes water to help Wyoming mines and to build a 400-mile canal between the Missouri River in South Dakota and Lake Superior. New York City has raised the possibility of using Lake Erie water to ease droughts.

The Great Lakes basin has "more and more demands for water and certainly more and more development," Mr. Ambs said. "One of the reasons we're looking to have a water management strategy is preparation for the future."

In 2001, the eight states that border the Great Lakes, along with Ontario and Quebec, two provinces within the lakes' watershed, pledged to develop a plan to manage access to the lakes' water.

By the end of this year, that plan may include an agreement - requiring ratification by the states' governments - that the water does not leave the Great Lakes basin except under rare circumstances, based on the applicant's proximity to the basin and whether the wastewater could be returned to the Great Lakes system.

The basin's western boundary is a barely perceptible rise in the land called the subcontinental divide; the water west of the divide flows into the Mississippi River system, and to the east it drains into the Great Lakes.

Waukesha's problem is that it is west of the line. Less than five miles west, but it might as well be 500 miles.

The city's mineral springs and hotels made Waukesha (pronounced WAW-keh-shaw) the "Saratoga of the West" in the late 19th century, and the water and the railroad that once brought in resort tourists later nourished a healthy mix of factories and agribusiness. The cityscape is now a mosaic of old industry and new subdivisions; a small downtown offers an eclectic tableau of stores, with a tattoo parlor, fish store and law office side by side near a modern town clock.

The draw-down of water from the deep aquifer was gradual at first, accelerating in the late 1980's and throughout the next 15 years. In recent measurements, the water level had dropped about 600 feet. And the deeper the water source, the more likely that it would be contaminated with too much radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element.

The city water's radium content is now more than double the acceptable level set by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2000. In setting the standard, the agency said that a person exposed over a lifetime to radium levels twice as high as Waukesha's "is projected to have a significantly increased chance of developing fatal cancer."

More than 50 Wisconsin communities, mostly in the southeastern part of the state, and up to six times that many nationally are in violation of the radium standard.

The Waukesha Water Utility is seeking 20 million gallons a day to be piped from Lake Michigan. "Water is the No. 1 need and the No. 1 issue for all Waukesha County communities," said Carol J. Lombardi, the city's mayor.

The county has grown nearly 35 percent in the last 25 years to an estimated 377,000 people in 2004. Other communities in Waukesha County also draw from the same deep aquifer as the city.

The deeper water also comes with high concentrations of the minerals that initially made Waukesha famous. Steve Korthoff, who has lived in the city for 28 years, said his family uses a water softener for household uses like showering because of a concentration of calcium. They drink the water freely. Asked about its taste, Mr. Korthoff said, "You get used to things." But, he added, "I'm not sure you would like it."

If the city does not get access to Lake Michigan water, it will face bills of perhaps tens of millions of dollars to lower the radium levels by either cleaning up the existing water or finding a new, uncontaminated source. But some politicians in Milwaukee, where the population fell by 8.9 percent in the 1990's, are loath to sell the city's Lake Michigan water to suburbs that have been draining away their businesses and wealthier residents, and their tax base.

Waukesha County "supports widening roads to allow for more transportation on the roadways to get more access out to that community, rather than try to limit the sprawl out there," said Michael Murphy, a Milwaukee alderman. "Their solution to the problem is not the conservation of their limited resources, but looking to Lake Michigan."

But Dan Duchniak, the general manager of the Waukesha Water Utility, said a diversion of 20 million gallons a day from Lake Michigan would be sufficient, and "70 million gallons a day would be enough to correct all the problems of southeastern Wisconsin."

Chicago, Mr. Duchniak noted, is eligible under a Supreme Court ruling to draw as much as 2.1 billion gallons a day from Lake Michigan, even though the vast majority of Chicago's land is outside the basin.

And, he said, Waukesha has more of a claim on Lake Michigan water than other cities outside of the subcontinental divide.

The argument requires an excursion into hydrology. Once, the deep aquifer the city tapped into was high enough that it tended to flow into Lake Michigan. Now, so much has been drawn from the aquifer that some geologists believe the flow has reversed.

"Our argument is that we're different," said Mr. Duchniak - a claim his critics contest. "We're not Las Vegas, we're not even Madison, Wis. We're using Great Lakes water today. What we'd like to do is take Great Lakes surface water rather than ground water."

"I want to take a straw sucking up ground water and change it from being a vertical straw to a horizontal straw," he said.

For critics like Emily Green, who oversees Great Lakes issues for the Sierra Club, Mr. Duchniak's arguments are a dodge. Her complaint, like that of Mr. Murphy, the Milwaukee alderman, is the absence of conservation as the growth spurt of the western exurbs, in towns like Oconomowoc, has accelerated.

"Yes, people need a place to live," Ms. Green said. "But do they need McMansions on five-acre lots?"

Mr. Duchniak said his city was working on a conservation plan that could reduce water use by 20 percent in the next 15 years. It is short on specifics, but hints at the likelihood of price increases.

The city has already embarked on a $12 million project to blend water from a shallow aquifer with the radium-laced water from farther down.

But that will not solve the ultimate problem of Waukesha's water supply. If the surface water from Lake Michigan is not available, Mr. Duchniak said, the city will have to spend $87 million bringing in underground water from areas west of the city - more than double what the Lake Michigan water would cost.

"Have we done things wrong in the past?" he asked. "Yes. Unequivocally, yes. But we have to move forward."
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