Aquifer in Public Trust

I'll admit I'm a bit fanatical about water and water usage. I studied Hydrogeology in school (and very much enjoyed it), and have worked as a hydrogeologist. I also lived in San Antonio, TX and spent 6 months in Las Vegas - both places where water conservation is taken seriously (in theory, unless you are a big employer or own a golf course).

So when I moved back to Massachusetts, I was struck by how completely unregulated our aquifers are. Most of the water for the most populated area of the state (including Boston) come from a series of reservoirs in the western part of the state via the MWRA pipe line. The MWRA (Massachusetts Water Resource Authority) serves 2.5 million people in 50 water communities, and also handles sewage systems for those communities. I currently live outside the MWRA service area, and I also grew up outside of the service area.

The MWRA does a fairly good job of supplying quality drinking water to the people it serves. The Quabbin Reservoir, located in the western part of the state, was built starting in 1930 and completed in 1939. The building of the Quabbin necessitated the abandonment of four towns, and the damming of the Swift River. It was a massive operation - they had to remove buildings, cemetaries, businesses, a railroad line and relocate all of the residents. This has always seemed very sad to me, although I can see the importance of the project and why it was necessary. At this point, the woods and area surrounding the Quabbin are mostly accessible only via foot traffic in order to protect the water supply. It is a beautiful area.

The MWRA is a publicly owned water system, so no one (in theory) is making money off of the water system. There's nothing really wrong with the MWRA, that I can see, although I'm sure, like any agency, it has its issues. My concern is that the MWRA isn't doing enough to push water conservation. Granted, the Quabbin has plenty of water. But it would be far better to conserve while we can than get into trouble later on. With climate change already occurring, it is difficult to tell what the future might bring, and it would be wise to conserve while we still have plentiful good quality drinking water.

However, I live outside the MWRA service area. We, like many of the towns around us, get our water supplied through residential drinking water wells, which means the local aquifer level is important to me, and I share an aquifer with my neighbors although we each have our own well. I have one neighbor who is fanatical about maintaining a perfect (and large) lawn. They water it regularly - in the middle of the day. Drives me nuts. There are 2 golf courses in town, which also use a ridiculous amount of water, although it's possible they have larger wells that are drawing from a deeper or different aquifer. It's hard to tell - as far as I know, our town has no listing or map of well information (I did go looking for information once...). There is no oversight at all, and as far as I know, no rules regarding water usage or withdrawl rates. Which is fine now - there appears to plenty of water right now. Which is exactly why we should be thinking of this right now, before it becomes an issue.

I was encouraged to read in the Boston Globe today an article about a bill recently passed in Vermont regarding Aquifers in the State of Vermont. If Governor Douglas signs this bill into law, all aquifers in the State of Vermont would be declared a public trust, which would necessitate a state permit for large water withdrawls. This wouldn't do anything about my crazy neighbor and their lawn, but it is a step in the right direction, and puts someone in control of the aquifers, instead of being a complete free for all. The law would also acknowledge that the groundwater in VT is owned by the people of the state, and that the groundwater must be managed by the state as such.

It's a step in the right direction.

In San Antonio, TX, there is the Edwards Aquifer Authority, which protects and manages supply for 1.7 million people - including agricultural (farming and/or ranching), residential and manufacturing uses. The Aquifer is 180 miles long. On the main page of their website, they have today's aquifer level, as well as the 10 day average. This information is also printed in the daily newspaper. There are laws regarding water usage - such as no watering between 10 am and 4 pm, and they can ticket people who waste water by watering their sidewalks/driveways or letting the water run down their street from their property. The Edwards Aquifer Authority also has different action levels based on different aquifer levels, and the information is all right there on the website.

While Massachusetts is in a very different climate than that of south-central Texas, the concept should be the same: the aquifers are a resource for the people, and need to be protected as such. It's a shared resource, and we shouldn't let this resource be a free-for-all until its too late. There are some protections for our aquifer currently under the Mass. Department of Environmental Protection, but the DEP also deals with a great many other issues, and we should have regional aquifer authorities that place the quality and quantity of our aquifers above everything else they do. Perhaps as a subset of the DEP. Maybe this should only apply in the western and central portions of the state, where people actually directly get water from the aquifer they live on top of. But right now, the only local political entity that has any oversight over our drinking water wells is the board of health - and from what I can tell, there is no cohesive organization of that data in my town. If there was a water quality issue, it would be very difficult to determine who is affected in what areas. If wells started to run dry, the only answer would be "go drill a deeper one" (not cheap), which places the burden on the homeowner, and ignores that there may be someone nearby using a larger amount of water than is reasonable, and your well may run dry as a result of their actions.