GroundwaterVirginia
In My Opinion

    To the Last Drop?
    January 1, 2010

A SHRINKING GROUNDWATER SUPPLY
The Virginia Coastal Plain is running out of groundwater. There, I've said it!
Stamp it on bumper stickers and tee shirts. Shout it from the steps of the
State Capitol. Share it on Twitter. "Good to the last drop!"
Of course, we will never completely exhaust the groundwater supply, but it
is already in overdraft and the day when it will no longer be adequate to
meet our water demands is fast approaching. Let's examine the evidence.
First, regional groundwater withdrawals have increased relentlessly for
more than a century and now stand at more than 120 million gallons per day.
Next, as a direct result of this pumping, artesian water levels have been
falling throughout the aquifer system for decades, at rates typically of 1.1 to
2.5 feet per year. Expanding and coalescing cones of depression and
diminishing available drawdown (reaching critical levels at some localities)
are further signs of the approaching storm. The late Herbert Stein,
chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Nixon and
Ford, perhaps said it best: Things that can't go on forever, don't. To make
matters worse, the law that is supposed to protect the groundwater supply
of Virginia appears powerless to stop the depletion.

A FLABBY GROUNDWATER LAW
By passing the Ground Water Act of 1992 (hereby termed, in lawyer- speak,
"the Act,"), the Virginia legislature recognized the threat to the
groundwater supply of the Commonwealth. Legislators realized that
"continued, unrestricted usage" of groundwater is contributing to
groundwater shortage, "thereby jeopardizing the public welfare, safety and
health." Responding to this threat, the legislators declared in the Act "that
in order to conserve, protect and beneficially utilize the ground water of
this Commonwealth . . . management and control of ground water resources
is essential."
Management and control. The phrase has a nice ring to it and, as the
essayist E. B. White might have put it, "sounds good because it looks
good." The problem is that while the Act specifies what is to be managed
and controlled (i.e.,groundwater resources), it fails to spell out the goals of
this activity. What is to be achieved by management and control? As the
ancients used to say, Quo finitum. To what end?
One is left to infer what goal the legislators had in mind from specific
provisions of the Act. Stripped to bare bones, the Act makes it illegal for
"any person" to withdraw 300,000 gallons of groundwater per month in a
Ground Water Management Area (GWMA) without a permit from the State
Water Control Board (SWCB). An earlier act of the legislature had
established two GWMAs on the Virginia Coastal Plain: Eastern Virginia and
Eastern Shore Groundwater Management Areas. The Groundwater Act of
1992 also granted to the SWCB the authority to establish additional Ground
Water Management Areas and defined the criteria by which the Board could
initiate such action. Clearly, then, the legislators intended to respond to the
"continued, unrestricted usage [of groundwater]" by placing restrictions on
the amount of groundwater that "any person" was permitted to withdraw in
a GWMA.
In truth, the Ground Water Act of 1992 is dangerously flabby. It boldly
proclaims that "the Board shall ensure that the maximum possible safe
supply of ground water will be preserved and protected for all other
beneficial uses," but it does nothing to remedy the worsening problem of
overdraft nor halt the continuous depletion of the artesian aquifers. Here's
a brutal truth: The preservation and protection of the groundwater supply
lies solely in our ability to reduce withdrawals to a level that can be
sustained by natural recharge. Instead of reducing overall groundwater
withdrawals from the Coastal Plain aquifers, the management tools of the
Act, while constraining withdrawals from individual water supply projects,
have allowed the total number of projects and the total withdrawals to
grow. This kind of management is little more than a form of wackamole. It
represents not a comprehensive strategy but a tyranny of small decisions.
Let me say plainly, the goal of the current groundwater law is all wrong.

GROUNDWATER LAWS AND REGULATIONS IN THE NEW AGE
If groundwater shortages and supply conflicts are to be avoided, or at
least moderated, then the goal of laws and regulations must be to foster
the transition to a sustainable groundwater supply (click here for a slide
presentation describing the need to shift to a sustainable groundwater supply).
What I have elsewhere called the "Age of Abundance and Complacency" is
ending (see The Lifetime Stages of an Artesian Groundwater System), and we
can no longer assume that the groundwater supply of the Virginia Coastal
Plain is infinite. Nor can we assume that we can continue to withdraw
groundwater without suffering the hydrologic or economic consequences.
New laws and regulations that have as their goal the utilization of
alternative water sources to meet our demand must be devised and
promulgated. Given the limits intrinsic to water supply technologies such
as conservation and desalinization, the focus of future legislation must be
on expanding water recycling and reuse. Sustainability must become more
than just an environmental catch phrase.
In conclusion, future legislation must shift the role of the Commonwealth
from enforcer of restrictions to partner in solutions. It must define the
Commonwealth as a collaborator with the private sector in promoting,
developing, and supporting a sustainable groundwater supply.

Frank W. Fletcher
Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted
all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban, Israeli diplomat
Past Opinion columns may viewed by clicking on
OPINION ARCHIVE
         It's the water supply, stupid!
      February 18, 2010

    If those politicians who bluster about how it's essential that we live
within our means and not pass debt onto our children and grandchildren
really mean it, then they had better recognize that the healthy functioning
of our economic and production systems is dependent on a reliable water
supply. I hope that they might put aside political ideology and take action
to ensure the preservation of this supply for future generations of
Virginians. -- CLICK HERE --