H2bidblog

Water planners and managers do their best to plan for water usage patterns but there are often many assumptions that have to factor into those plans. Specifically, how will private wells be used, and how will farmers use natural water sources such as streams and rivers adjacent to their land? How robust is the aquifer? What is the recharge rate of that aquifer relative to rainfall patterns? A poor assumption relating to any of these questions can unhinge a well-crafted plan. Now, planners may have a new tool for evaluating water sustainability – satellite imagery.

Scientists at the University of California have a project called GRACE which stands for “Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment” and the project appear poised to redefine the science of hydrology. The project team looks for small variations in the Earth’s gravity to identify trouble spots where people could be making unsustainable demands on groundwater. Jay S. Famiglietti, director of the University of California’s Center for Hydrologic Modeling, says that GRACE can detect changes in ice, snow, surface water and soil moisture.

In an article in the journal Nature, the GRACE team identified and evaluated a region in northwest India. Indirect evidence had been mounting that groundwater was being consumed faster than it was being replenished but no direct evidence was available. The team used changes in observations from the NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment to show that groundwater was being depleted at a mean rate of 4.0cm annually over the Indian states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana, including Delhi.

The Indian government suspected that this was happening, but there had been no regional assessment of the rate of groundwater depletion. The GRACE team used terrestrial water storage-change observations and simulated soil-water variations and what they found was startling. During the period from August 2002 to October 2008, the groundwater depletion was equivalent to a net loss of 109 km3 of water, which is double the capacity of India’s largest surface-water reservoir. The detected depletion was especially significant given that the annual rainfall was close to normal throughout the period which removes abnormal weather as a possible culprit.

After using the GRACE data to look at the complete picture, the team ruled out significant changes in soil moisture, water volume in fresh water bodies, glaciers and biomass that could have otherwise accounted for the water use. Based on these facts, the team concluded that human consumption was the only factor that could account for the drop in groundwater levels. Although the observation period was relatively brief, the available data indicates that an unsustainable rate of consumption is present and in the absence of measures taken to address the issue, problems could manifest including a reduction of agricultural output.

GRACE has also been used to show similar patterns of consumption in the western United States, African nations and elsewhere. In contrast to the reaction in India, where the data was viewed as a confirmation and reinforcement of what was already suspected, findings in other regions have been viewed with some suspicion. California water managers, for example, were skeptical of data that showed from 2003 to 2010, aquifers under the state’s Central Valley were drawn down by 25 million acre-feet. Additionally, Greg Zlotnick, a board member of the Association of California Water Agencies, said that the managers feared that the data could be used to demand a reallocation of the region’s freshwater resources.

As with many new technologies, there will be a learning curve with this emerging science and healthy skepticism many lead to improvements in the science or greater understanding of its limitations. Such skepticism, however, should not be used as a singular reason to dismiss findings. Rather, efforts should be made to directly confirm or challenge the GRACE findings. We should acknowledge that the entire water community is searching for the same set of answers and new methods such as the GRACE project may offer valuable tools in the quest to obtain those answers.

Most residents of the United States take their overall water security as a given; certainly, some in the desert southwest worry that they will need to make choices between which fields to water and which to abandon but very few worry about where they will get their fresh drinking water. Imagine if that changed. For the residents of one small town in western Ohio, it did change; their town’s water supply became so fouled that it was impossible to supply the residents with drinking water and emergency measures had to be put in place. In this, the first of a three part series, H2Bid will examine this catastrophe and its impact on the town of Camden, Ohio.
Camden, Ohio, is a small town in the southwest corner of the state; in the summer of 2010, Camden residents began noticing that their tap water exhibited a salty taste. The town’s local water service supplied drinking water to roughly 2,500 residents; this water was drawn from three main well sites. The town’s mayor and council wanted to understand what was happening, so they took action to test the water.
In August, 2010, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) tested the water and determined that one of the three wells showed significant salt and brine contamination and a second well was exhibiting signs of rising salt levels. The first well was deemed unfit for drinking and was immediately taken out of service. A few weeks later, the second well was taken out of service as well; the third well was taken offline to avoid any potential that heavy use would further foul the aquifer. By the fall of 2010, the entire well field was contaminated and deemed completely unfit for drinking.
After the first well’s contamination was discovered, Camden’s mayor and city council began to immediately distribute bottled water to the town’s residents. Each home was allotted one gallon of water per day; households with children were given two gallons each day. Even with this assistance, the residents’ anger grew; hand-made signs asking how this happened lined the streets and town council meetings ended in arguments and yelling. The OEPA attended a few of those meetings and attempted to help the town’s citizens understand the issues.
The OEPA believed that uncovered salt piles on a property were a potential cause of the contamination. The scientists believed that salt runoff from those piles flowed into a streambed that was dry during summer months. This water, high in salt concentration, then soaked through the streambed into the aquifer. This contamination likely happened over the course of one or more years, as the salt piles were first identified in 2009. At that time, the OEPA and the city of Camden asked that the salt be covered or removed; it is plausible that such a cleanup would have saved the city’s well field, though it will never be known for certain.
In the fall of 2010, the city of Camden faced tough choices. The nearest municipal water supply, the Southwest Regional Water system, would be a good alternative to the town’s fouled water supply, but it would take several months and an estimated cost of $400,000 USD to connect Camden to the system. Alternately, the town was drilling exploratory wells in a different area to find out if a new well field site could be established. The cost of establishing a new well field would be less than connecting to the Southwest Regional system, but it was not a certainty that a new, uncontaminated aquifer with sufficient water volume could be identified quickly.
In two articles, next month, H2Bid will explore how the contamination happened and what is being done to mitigate the situation for the residents. In addition to exploring the causes that led up to this town’s unfortunate situation, H2Bid will look at what could be done differently so that this situation does not repeat itself in another town. Hopefully these lessons can be reduced to practice and new processes implemented in time to avoid another Camden.

In a recent H2Bid article, Rivers Under Stress, it was noted that watershed protection and management was critical in reducing river stress and cultivating more sustainable freshwater resources. In a follow-up to that October, 2010, article, today’s piece will shed light on current practices and techniques for watershed protection.
When discussing watershed protection many ideas are voiced, but one theme which runs throughout virtually all conversations is coordination. Without coordinated, organized efforts, the successful practices tend to be localized and have little if any impact in the larger freshwater system. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) are charged at the national level with watershed protection; the US EPA works with the Department of the Interior and numerous state and local agencies to implement a coordinated day-to-day watershed management approach in the United States and the NRCS plans and maintains the long term vision for US watersheds.

The US EPA advocates the following model for an integrated watershed approach:
The watershed approach is hydrologically defined

• geographically focused
• includes all stressors (air and water)

• The plan involves all stakeholders
• includes public (federal, state, local) and private sector
• is community based
• includes a coordinating framework

• The plan strategically addresses priority water resource goals (e.g. water quality, habitat)
• integrates multiple programs (regulatory and voluntary)
• based on sound science
• aided by strategic watershed plans
• uses adaptive management

Following this coordinated model, the EPA, states, and communities have been able to make significant gains in many US watersheds. One regulatory tool in the preservation and rehabilitation of watersheds is the US Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act, first enacted into law in 1972 was focused on reducing or eliminating point sources of water pollution. These point sources included factory discharge, wastewater discharge and untreated sewage overflow and other “obvious” forms of pollution. Limits were established for concentrations of substances in the rivers and lakes and the EPA was tasked with enforcing the law.
In an update to the law in 1987, the thresholds for pollutants were updated based on the latest science and nonpoint source reductions were also targeted. Nonpoint source pollution represents a significant threat to rivers and lakes not only in the US but around the world. Agricultural and urban runoff had been determined to be significant contributors to water quality problems, the amended Clean Water Act was an attempt to regulate and remediate those issues. Of particular concern were the organic and other chemicals that concentrate in soils and are prone to being carried with the soil into nearby streams and rivers when heavy rainfall occurs.
One low-tech approach to nonpoint pollution that has been extremely successful is the use of buffer zones. In agricultural land, these buffers are simply uncultivated areas or strips of land where the farmland abuts a stream or river. These buffer zones effectively slow the erosion process and offer a place for solids to settle prior to reaching the water. In urban settings these buffers may include silt fences or areas of grass that are left intentionally higher at property perimeters. Both of these methods catch soil and other solids before they enter a city’s storm sewer system. The US EPA has been able to incentivize the creation and maintenance of these buffers through the Clean Water Act legislation; this is but one example of how regulators (the EPA), land owners and the water community have been able to take a coordinated approach to watershed protection.
Going forward, the EPA and the water community are constantly looking for more ways to work more cohesively. The US EPA has established Watershed Central (located on the web at http://www.epa.gov/owow/watershed/watershedcentral/ ) in an attempt to educate and provide technical resources to watershed planners and managers. This is an excellent resource that ties together the planning, regulatory, testing, incentive programs and day to day management that it takes to pull off a comprehensive watershed protection program. There is still more work to be done, to be sure, but the Clean Water Act, the US EPA and the US water conservation community are making headway in tackling the challenges of reducing the environmental stresses in watersheds they manage.