Tag: groundwater

The Public Trust Doctrine Percolates into State Courts, Legislators, and Commissions to Protect Groundwater, Streams, Lakes, Economies and Quality of Life

Published on July 17th, 2018 by - Blog Posts, H2Olson, Public Trust Tuesday

“Water Justice Flows Like Water.”[1]

Law professor Sprout D. Kapua’ala, borrowing from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech in 1968 (“justice rolling down like waters”), captures decades of conflict over the streams and waters of Hawai’i, siphoned and dried from a century of withdrawals and diversion ditches cut across the landscape for corporate massive production of sugar and fruit exports. This unbridled exploitation of Hawai’i water has distressed stream and wetland ecosystems and overwhelmed native and public water uses, including the native rights to small-scale Kalo cultivation, gathering, and citizen rights to fishing, swimming, drinking water, and recreation protected by the public trust doctrine. 

For the past two decades, the Hawai’i Supreme Court has faced head on the collision between the near total loss of the Makapipi and East Maui rivers because of numerous ditches across the land to transport water for corporate sugar. In 2000, the Court ruled that state water board decisions that allowed water diversions for large corporate farming were subject to the public trust doctrine under the Hawai’i constitution and common law.[2] The court ruled that under the public trust doctrine, basic stream flows had to be maintained to protect public trust uses, such as small-scale native farming, fishing, and drinking water. Scientists and citizens recognized that small-scale cultivation of Kalo requires steady flows of groundwater and streams, and in turn the native production and uses of water sustain culture and communities. Since the Court’s Waihole I decision in 2000, the public trust doctrine has been applied to the state water board and even the land use and zoning boards of municipalities to protect drinking water and other public trust uses from land and water intensive development. [3]

As a result, the legislature passed laws requiring designation of groundwater aquifers or streams for special protection of flows and levels to support public trust protected uses. Native, environmental, and community organizations joined together to petition a state water board to declare groundwater and streams subject to special public trust protection through maintaining stream flows or groundwater migration and levels. Large corporate farming and other interests contested these designations. The Court continued to respond by recognizing and upholding at least minimum flows and levels of freshwater sources, balancing public uses against large volume water diversion and use for farming and development.[4]

Our mission at FLOW, as most of you may know, is to seek adoption of the public trust doctrine principles in every state and beyond. The primary principles under the public trust doctrine are: promotion of a public purpose, such as a public drinking water supply, fish restoration, or public beach access, and non-impairment of water, ecosystems, and public trust uses, such as those mentioned above. A universal understanding and application of public trust principles offers a way out of the world water crisis, which is worsening every day as a result of global warming, pollution, waste and abuse of water resources, increased population and demand for food and clean, safe water. Irrigation and water diversions for agriculture account for 70 percent of human use of fresh groundwater, lakes, and streams, industrial and steam-generated electricity another 20 percent, and municipal and residential use the remaining 10 percent. Massive diversions of water across continents have become too expensive and disruptive to sustain any longer.

Future survival, economies, and quality of life will require sustainable practices with a primary goal of assuring the integrity of flows and levels within each watershed and region of a country. Public trust principles impose limits on exploitation of flows and levels, or private subordination of protected public trust uses. If we understand that water is a commons owned or held by each state as sovereign for the benefit of people and the overarching public interest, and apply these principles, we will make very good decisions about human survival, environment, economy, jobs, and quality of life.

Recent Developments

In the last two weeks, the realization and importance of the public trust doctrine has come home to ordinary citizens in Hawaii. The relationship of public trust to groundwater and public water uses has been percolating in the legislatures and courts of Vermont, Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Rhode Island, as well as South Africa, Pakistan, and India. Massive groundwater withdrawals or land use practices and water diversions like the Colorado River, Chicago diversion from Lake Michigan, the loss of the Aral Sea in Russia, or Yangtze in China, that impair public trust waters and drinking water, fishing, swimming, or other important uses are subject to public trust principles that prevent privatization and impairment.  The public trust does not prohibit industrial or agricultural withdrawals, or the privatization, diversion and sale of water, but it subjects these uses to an overarching backstop framework[5] that assures and sustains the flows, levels, and underlying uses of water, both human, environmental, and businesses, within watersheds and communities.

On June 20, 2018, in a historic decision, the Hawai’i Commission on Water Resources Management ruled that stream flows must be restored in the Makapipi and East Maui rivers, which will require the closing of several irrigation diversion ditches and significant limitations on others. [6]The corporate holding company, Alexander and Baldwin, of Hawaiian Commercial Sugar, argued for diversified agriculture and planning for water use for its land holdings. The Water Commission came down on the side of local, public trust uses by restoring stream flows diverted for more than a century.  Going forward, Hawaii companies, municipalities, and land developers must look at limiting water uses to sustain the basic water uses assured all people under the constitution and public trust doctrine.

What does this mean for the waters of the Great Lakes basin, the waters of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (and two Canadian provinces)?  We have significant protection of waters of the basin from diversion under the Great Lakes Compact diversion ban. Recent large-volume diversions of Lake Michigan to Waukesha and now approved for the Foxconn complex outside the basin show there are gaps or loopholes. The MDEQ in Michigan approved diversion of another 210 million gallons a year from the headwaters of two cold water trout streams for Nestlé’s bottled water export operations; this, too, was under a “bottled water” exception in the Compact and Michigan law.  The same MDEQ just permitted the loss of 600 million gallons of water near a wetlands, creek and lake to mine potash, even though it is widely available elsewhere. The Michigan legislature just passed a law signed by Governor Snyder to circumvent water standards and public permit proceedings that would safeguard streams, lakes, and groundwater from excessive withdrawals and water loss for large corporate farms growing corn and crops for biofuels and other industries.  To put things in a global perspective, Saudi Arabia, China, India and other water-scarce, industrial, high-population countries are buying millions of acres of land in water and soil rich countries, like Brazil and the United States, to use large volumes of water here to export food to their people at home, because they don’t have the water or want to use the water they do have for continued development and industrial growth. How will these competing, high demands for water play out in watersheds, streams, rivers, lakes, wetlands or domestic farming, drinking water, and protection of fishing, local land uses and development?

The Hawaiian experience is fertile well-watered ground for those of us in Michigan, the Great Lakes, or elsewhere, to understand the importance of water, stream flows, levels, and watersheds to our own environment, heritage, economy, and culture. The place to start is fashioning a well-crafted, clear, concise statement for protection of the public trust in our waters where we live and survive. The sooner we do this, the sooner we will be prepared to withstand the coming global, regional, and local conflicts over water. If we fail to do this, citizens, cities and towns, farming, and tourism or recreation like fishing, swimming, boating, and even golfing will be subordinated to unpredictable, thirsty, large private and international interests.

Jim Olson, President and Founder

Putting public trust principles at work now, by simple, articulate laws or constitutional provisions will provide the protection we need. We will not lock up our water, but we will assure its sustainability in our rural, urban, and regional Great Lakes watersheds and communities. Our life and livelihoods here in Michigan and the Great Lakes depend on the integrity of flow and levels of our groundwater and streams.

[1] Sproat, D Kapua’ala, Water Justice Flows Like Water: The Moon Court’s Role in Illuminating Hawai’i Water Law, 33 Univ. Hawai’i L. Rev 537.

[2] In Re Water Use Applications (Waihole I), 94 Hawai’i 97 (2000).

[3]  Waihole II, 105 Haw. 1 (2004); In re Kukui (Molaka’i), 116 Haw. 481 (2007).

[4]  Id.

[5] Protection of the Great Lakes: 15-Year Review (International Joint Commission, Jan. 2016).

[6] Petition to Amend Interim Instream Flow Standards for Honopou et al., State of Hawaii, Commission on Water Resource Management, Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, & Decision and Order, Case No. CCH-MA13-01, June 20, 2018 (300 pps.).

Running Michigan’s Water Into the Ground

Published on April 24th, 2018 by - Public Trust Tuesday

byzantine-empire-public-land.-trusts
FLOW’s organizing principle is the public trust doctrine.  What sounds like an exotic concept is quite simple.  This centuries-old principle of common law holds that there are some resources, like water and submerged lands that by their nature cannot be privately owned.  Rather, these commons – including the Great Lakes — belongs to the public.  And governments, like the State of Michigan, have a responsibility to protect public uses of these resources.  We explicitly address public trust concerns on what we’re calling Public Trust Tuesday. 

Last week, Michigan Radio broadcast a two-part series on Michigan’s groundwater. They found that there are more than 2,000 places around Michigan where, instead of cleaning up contaminated groundwater, the state bars people from using it or even touching the soil — and this is an extremely conservative estimate.

How did we get to this point? Groundwater is profoundly important to our state. Michigan has more private drinking water wells than any other state. About 45% of the state’s population depends on groundwater as its drinking water source. Manufacturing industries and agriculture depend heavily on groundwater. As much as 42% of the water in the Great Lakes originates from groundwater.
 
And yet state policy treats it as disposable.
 
Michigan water quality protections in theory already extend to groundwater. As defined in state statute, “Waters of the state” means groundwaters, lakes, rivers, and streams and all other watercourses and waters, including the Great Lakes within Michigan’s boundaries.
 
Michigan’s Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act (NREPA), Part 327, declares that groundwater and surface water are one single hydrologic system. Groundwater can recharge surface water, and surface water on occasion loses water to recharge groundwater. The waters of the state should be considered one resource for any groundwater protection regulation or standard.
 

Dave Dempsey, FLOW Senior Advisor

Part 327 recognizes water in the Great Lakes basin and Michigan is held in trust for the benefit of citizens. This principle should govern every water statute, and any statute regulating activities that protect groundwater, to assure that contaminants do not impair the public trust in connected wetlands, creeks, streams, and lakes, and Great Lakes.

 
In short, the public trust doctrine applies to groundwater, part of the larger hydrologic system. FLOW will be working to affirm this — and to make sure these vital waters are protected.

When is Clean Not Clean? A Critical Environmental Issue

Published on January 25th, 2018 by - Blog Posts

The discovery of thousands of discarded chemical drums on the Hooker Chemical Company property near Montague, Michigan in the 1970s helped spur Michigan's toxic cleanup program.

The discovery of thousands of discarded chemical drums on the Hooker Chemical Company property near Montague, Michigan in the 1970s helped spur Michigan’s toxic cleanup program.

Now retired, Andrew Hogarth was the respected longtime chief of the Remediation and Redevelopment Division – in charge of toxic cleanup – in the State Department of Environmental Quality. Despite over 30 years of effort by state government and more than $1 billion of state taxpayer money invested to deal with toxic contamination, thousand of toxic sites remain. Recent publicity about chemical contamination across the state prompted FLOW to ask Hogarth for perspective.

Can you give a little history of how Michigan’s cleanup program has evolved? 

In the early days of Michigan’s cleanup program, our objective was to clean contaminated sites up to naturally occurring conditions, making them safe for all uses. Since groundwater is a public trust resource, part of the commonwealth of our citizens, the approach was that only the Michigan Attorney General, on behalf of the people of the state, could accept less in a settlement involving contaminated groundwater. It was a fairly simple approach that was relatively easy to discuss and implement on some sites.

However, it soon became clear, given the large number of contaminated sites and the costs involved, that the natural background level was often not practical or sometimes not even possible to achieve. This led to a need for another way to establish cleanup goals for contaminated sites. “How clean is clean?” became a question posed by experts in many fields across the country to signify the challenge we faced. It led to what we now call risk based cleanup criteria.

Criteria needed to be developed for the full range of potential migration and exposure pathways and the health, environmental, and safety risks they might pose. The new approach also made it unnecessary to meet criteria if exposures through that pathway could be reliably controlled. [For example, a community might pass an ordinance banning new well installation in contaminated aquifers.]

 

What are the implications of this change?

Over the period of my career, the biggest change has been going to risk based cleanup criteria with the option of imposing use restrictions on future use of the property. This now happens frequently, as responsible parties choose not to clean up a site sufficiently to make it safe for unrestricted residential use. This change has been one that the regulated community has favored in an effort to reduce cleanup costs, but it has created program complexity and poses potential health and safety problems for the future.

A number of different exposure pathways or hazards need to be considered for every site, such as drinking of groundwater, direct contact with soil, runoff into surface waters, vapor intrusion into buildings, and fire and explosion hazards, to name a few. Other important factors such as chemical toxicity, variations in likely exposures associated with differing land uses, and what kind of use restrictions are reliable are critical matters that need to be built into the regulatory scheme. To be protective into the future, the use restrictions must be effective in perpetuity.

 

Is there anything going on in Lansing to address these concerns?

Michigan’s Part 201 Cleanup Criteria Rules set forth what the criteria are and how they are to be applied. The last major update to these rules was in 2002. Much of the science supporting those criteria is now decades old, and in some cases outdated. Consequently, many criteria are no longer protective, and some are too restrictive. Some chemicals now of serious concern are not even included. MDEQ staff have been working for several years with various stakeholder groups, to develop a revised rules package. Those revisions are now out for public comment.

Although not all members of the regulated community agree with all the changes, it is a good package that includes updated exposure and toxicity information, where available, and an improved process for addressing vapor intrusion. It should provide a much improved program for dealing with contaminated sites and the hazards they pose. Of particular importance is the vapor intrusion pathway, which if not dealt with properly, can pose serious health and safety hazards for an unsuspecting public.

It is very important that the rules be promulgated soon. I am very concerned that the few stakeholders that continue to object to certain aspects of the package will use the legislative process to delay or block its implementation. Recently proposed Senate bills, if passed, could provide unnecessary platforms for creating confusion about the science and delaying progress.

 

Is there a way of protecting people in the future from the risk of exposure to contaminants that have not been cleaned up from some sites?

It is critically important that the land use restrictions and engineering controls placed on properties as part of a site remedy be properly installed, maintained in perpetuity, and be recorded with the deed. Such sites also need to be properly monumented to reduce the potential for accidental breaching of exposure barriers or land use activities inconsistent with the use restrictions. As properties change hands in the future, the likelihood of such problems increases.

There are already thousands of properties in Michigan with land use restrictions as part of a contaminated site cleanup project. There are many more sites that are known to be
contaminated where a remedy has not been implemented. At these sites, even if the owners or operators are not the party liable for causing the contamination, owners and operators are obligated to exercise due care to assure that people do not get exposed to unsafe conditions. However, MDEQ does not have the resources to assure that these sites are being effectively monitored.

Political efforts to deregulate and shrink the size of government leave agencies like the MDEQ underfunded and understaffed to accomplish their missions. If sufficient resources are not available to monitor compliance with these obligations, 20, 50, maybe 100 years from now, once again people may be asking: Why did they let this happen? What were they thinking?

Public Trust Tuesday: A Spreading Stain

Published on January 23rd, 2018 by - Public Trust Tuesday

byzantine-empire-public-land.-trusts

FLOW’s organizing principle is the public trust doctrine.  What sounds like an exotic concept is quite simple.  This 1500-year-old principle of common law holds that there are some resources, like water and submerged lands, that by their nature cannot be privately owned.  Rather, this commons – including the Great Lakes — belongs to the public.  And governments, like the State of Michigan, have a responsibility to protect public uses of these resources.  We explicitly address public trust concerns on what we’re calling Public Trust Tuesday.

New York’s Love Canal was once an instantly recognizable label to most Americans.  In 1980, after toxic waste from an old chemical dump began to ooze up in the yards of a housing development built atop the dump, authorities evacuated the neighborhood.  Love Canal became a national symbol of chemical mismanagement, and the impetus for the Superfund cleanup program.

Michigan officials looking for toxic waste dumps and spill sites affecting groundwater found them everywhere.  That, coupled with public concern about everything from health effects to depressed property values, prompted the Legislature and voters to kick in more than $1 billion in state funds for groundwater cleanup.

And then something happened.

In 1995, state policy changed.  Instead of striving to remove all contamination, Michigan went to a risk-based approach – meaning contamination could remain in the ground if means could be put to work to limit the exposure of human beings to these poisons.  These means could be everything from a concrete cap atop contaminated soil to a local ordinance prohibiting the drilling of new wells into contaminated groundwater. 

That saved businesses legally responsible for the contamination considerable money, but it also fostered the spread of contaminants in groundwater in many locations – often groundwater once used for drinking water.

Some areas with spreading contamination have recently attracted media attention, including sites associated with Wurtsmith Air Force Base, Wolverine Worldwide and Mancelona.

The Michigan DEQ estimates that contaminated groundwater is coming out of the ground and discharging to lakes, streams or wetlands at approximately 1,000 locations in Michigan.  It’s as if 1,000 new (and sloppy) chemical plants were sited in Michigan and were allowed to have lax or no controls on the pollution they are sending into our common waters.

The public trust doctrine holds that certain natural resources like navigable waters are preserved in perpetuity for public use and enjoyment, and that government has a duty to safeguard these uses as a trustee on behalf of the public.  By allowing contaminated groundwater to spread and pollute surface water, the State of Michigan has failed to fulfill its public trust obligations.  It’s not only a breach of the public trust in water, it’s a potentially grave threat to the health of our citizens.

Osceola County Site Visit –  Stealing Michigan’s Invisible Resource

Published on July 5th, 2017 by - News

 

This article is a follow-up to my January post on “Groundwater – Invisible but Precious.”

On a recent bike tour in northern Michigan, I decided to put Evart on the itinerary and stop by the area where Nestle Waters North America is hoping to increase their taking of Michigan groundwater. Nestle would like to increase the flow in their existing production well (PW-1) from 250 gallons per minute (gpm) to 400 gpm, and send the water to their water bottling plant in Mecosta County. This flow would total over 500,000 gallons per day, or 210 million gallons per year. Nestle’s cost to take this water - a $200 permit fee. This production well is located in a hydrologically sensitive area of springs and between the upper reaches of Twin Creek and Chippewa Creek.

Before my visit, I had already reviewed information provided by Nestle: topographic maps, soil borings, historical stream flow and groundwater level data, an aquifer test performed on the production well, and the predictions from a groundwater computer model their consultants produced. Hydrologists rely on this type of data and models to analyze watersheds and look at “what if” scenarios. A site visit fills in some of the gaps and details that you can’t see on a sheet of paper or on your computer screen.

This area just north of the small village of Evart is beautiful - rolling and wooded. The land is private, and mostly occupied by hunt clubs and the Spring Hill Camp. The travel was slow for me on my bike because the roads were soft gravel and hilly. A loaded touring bike (and owner) prefer flat and paved. I was able to only see the creeks where they crossed the roads, but I was able to get some sense of the hydrology and topography.

Bike touring provides lots of time to think, and my concerns with this taking of Michigan groundwater rolled around in my brain. Two primary concerns are as follows:

  1. Nestle has been pumping groundwater from this production well for over a decade and gathering data. It is unusual but very beneficial to have all of this historical data. Unfortunately, Nestle did not use the data to analyze the effects of the historic pumping on the small streams and springs near their production well PW-1, nor did they share all of the data with the public. They only used the data to develop a computer model that was then utilized to predict the impacts of an increased flow from PW-1. Computer models are far from perfect. FLOW hired its own hydrologist to review Nestle’s reports, and has pointed to several concerns and unsupported assumptions in Nestle’s work.
  2. The production well is located where it is so that Nestle can label the water “Spring Water.” Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirements in fact state that “Spring water shall be collected only at the spring or through a bore hole tapping the underground formation feeding the spring.” (See excerpts from FDA regulations in Attachment 1). The difference between taking a few gpm of groundwater flowing out of a spring, and pumping hundreds of gpm from a bore hole is significant and will likely always impact the small springs and streams nearby. If a large production well is installed, one is simply drawing in groundwater from the area and the production well can be located out of the sensitive headwater areas of the watershed. For example, the City of Evart community wells are located only a few miles away from PW-1, along the Muskegon River, and are pumping virtually the same water from the same unconfined aquifer. But the potential impacts are much different – the average flow in the Muskegon river is 450,000 gpm, whereas the average flow from a gauge on Twin Creek close to PW-1 is 780 gpm. When a pumped well removes 400 gpm from an unconfined aquifer, the result is a taking of 400 gpm from the springs and streams nearby. The impact is obvious.

So whether you enjoy bottled water or not (I don’t buy it), it is clear to me that Nestle is taking too much of Michigan’s groundwater, in a precarious and sensitive location, for too small a fee. On this bike trip, I travelled along the Muskegon River from Paris to Hersey to Evart to where it crosses Highway M-61 west of Harrison. It is a big, beautiful river, from a big, beautiful watershed that drains a large chunk of Michigan. Groundwater taken close to the Muskegon River minimizes the impact to the watershed, and gets rid of the uncertainty of the computer models. This water could not be labeled Spring Water, but that may be a compromise that the citizens of Michigan would be willing to accept.

 

Bob Otwell has been a member of the FLOW board since 2013. He is the founder of Otwell Mawby PC, a Traverse City environmental consulting firm. He has degrees in Civil Engineering and has experience in groundwater and surface water hydrology, along with environmental studies and clean-up. Bob did a career switch and was the executive director of TART Trails from 2001 to 2010.

FDA Regulation Excerpts

FLOW Urges State Denial of Nestlé Corporation’s Water Grab

Published on April 12th, 2017 by - Reports & Media Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                     April 12, 2017

Contact: Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director                          Email: Liz@FLOWforWater.org

FLOW (For Love of Water)                                                   Office: (231) 944-1568

Cell: (570) 872-4956

 

FLOW Urges State Denial of Nestlé Corporation’s Water Grab

Public Hearing Is Tonight for Swiss Giant’s Proposal that Threatens Michigan Natural Resources, Flunks Legal Test

 

TRAVERSE CITY, MI – Based on law and science, the State of Michigan should reject a proposal by Nestlé Corporation to dramatically increase its pumping of hundreds of millions of gallons of groundwater a year in Osceola County, northeast of Big Rapids near Evart, for sale as bottled water under its Ice Mountain brand.

The permit application submitted by the world’s largest bottled water company – which faces a state public hearing tonight in Big Rapids – does not comply with state legal requirements, according to an analysis by FLOW’s environmental attorneys and scientific advisors. And the Swiss company’s technical support documents purporting to show little or no impact on natural resources, including headwaters streams, wetlands, and brook trout populations, are based on faulty assumptions, manipulated models, and insufficient data.

Nestlé Ice Mountain is seeking a state permit to increase its spring water withdrawal from 150 to 400 gallons-per-minute, or as much as 576,000 gallons-per-day, from a well in the headwaters of Chippewa and Twin creeks in Osceola County, threatening public resources in the Muskegon River watershed. Nestlé pays $200 per year in state paperwork fees to operate.

“This proposal falls well short of passing the legal test,” said James Olson, founder of FLOW, a Traverse City-based water law and policy center dedicated to upholding the public’s rights to use and benefit from the Great Lakes and its tributaries. “Nestlé has rigged the numbers to try to justify its contention that it will not damage natural resources. The state must recognize that charade and deny the permit.”

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality will hold a public hearing tonight at Ferris State University on Nestle’s request to expand its groundwater pumping operations. The hearing begins at 7 p.m. at Ferris State University Center at 805 Campus Drive in Big Rapids, and will be preceded from 4-6 p.m. by a state information session.

A review of Nestlé’s support documents by FLOW’s technical advisors found that Nestlé’s:

  • Information and evaluation of groundwater, wetlands, springs, and streams is based on an unreliable, manipulated computer model that looks narrowly at the proposed 150 gallons-per-minute pumping level increase, and not the cumulative 400 gallons-per-minute;
  • Application fails to rely on observed existing hydrology, soils, environment, and other conditions, in violation of Michigan’s water withdrawal law, which mandates evaluation of existing conditions;
  • Consultants failed to collect or use real conditions to compare to its unfounded, computer modeling predictions of no effects;
  • Model assumes more water in the natural system than exists, assumes more rain and snowfall gets into groundwater than actually occurs, used only selective monitoring for 2001-2002, and left out monitoring data from 2003 to present because it would show more negative impact to streams, wetlands, and wildlife.

“Our analysis shows there will be significant drops in water levels in wetlands, some of which will dry up for months, if not years, and will be completely altered in function and quality,” Olson said. “There will be significant drops in stream flows and levels, and this will impair aquatic resources and brook trout populations and the overall fishery of the two affected streams.”

Olson said there is no reasonable basis for the Michigan DEQ to make a determination in support of Nestlé’s application, since the state Safe Drinking Water Act requires denial if there is insufficient information. Nestlé’s failure to evaluate the full 400 gallons-per-minute it would be withdrawing fails to comply with the requirement of Michigan’s water withdrawal law. The adverse impacts on water resources violate the standards of the Michigan Environmental Protection Act.

“This is a fatally flawed proposal,” Olson said. “The state has no choice but to deny the application.”

The DEQ will accept written comment until 5 p.m. on April 21. Written comments can be emailed to deq-eh@michigan.gov or mailed to: MDEQ, Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance Division, Environmental Health Section, P.O. Box 30421, Lansing, Michigan, 48909-7741.

Nestlé’s application, supporting data and documents are posted on the DEQ website: http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,4561,7-135-3313-399187–,00.html

To learn more about FLOW’s efforts to challenge the Nestlé permit and protect the Great Lakes and Michigan’s groundwater, visit our website at www.FLOWforWater.org.

 

###

 

Click here to view FLOW’s recent comment on the Nestlé Application.

 

 

Groundwater – Invisible but Precious

Published on January 4th, 2017 by - News

Bob Otwell, FLOW Board of Directors
December 2016

Most of us in northern Michigan drink groundwater and use it to bathe. Outside of metro Detroit, the majority of Michigan’s public water supplies along with water in rural homes comes from groundwater. Groundwater also is used to water golf courses and supply the growing thirst of irrigated farm land. We would not have trout in our northern streams if they were not nourished during the heat of the summer by cold groundwater. This is our invisible resource.

This blog is the first in a two-part series examining groundwater; this article will provide the reader a better understanding of the physics, and the second one will examine current groundwater regulations.

Understanding Groundwater

Groundwater is simply rainfall and snowmelt that has percolated into the ground. In northern Michigan, about one third of our annual 33 inches of precipitation ends up as groundwater. The remainder runs off on the surface to lakes and streams, or is taken up by plants and is lost through evapotranspiration. In the Great Lakes Basin, abundant groundwater is stored in the layers of sand and gravel left behind by the glaciers, and in sandstone and limestone bedrock. The temperature of groundwater is generally the average annual air temperature above the ground. In northern Michigan, this means 50 degrees Fahrenheit all year round. This temperature cools trout streams and provides a nice cool drink in the summer, and it also helps keep small streams from freezing in the winter.

Groundwater flows naturally by gravity through permeable sands and other porous materials, and continues moving downhill until it seeps into wetlands, springs, streams, rivers or lakes. We’ve all seen groundwater percolating into a spring, or felt the cool currents on our feet while swimming in one of our clear lakes. But groundwater discharge to surface water bodies is in fact continuous throughout the bottom of the stream, lake, etc., even though we can’t see it. They are connected, and if you care about a certain babbling brook, you in fact care deeply about the groundwater that makes it what it is. Rivers and streams flow at a velocity measured in feet per second, whereas groundwater flows at a rate of feet per day. This sure and steady seepage provides the base flow that makes a perennial stream flow all year round.

Groundwater also flows unnaturally where the “downhill” direction is altered through the installation of wells and pumps. This pumping creates a “drawdown cone” around the well. If a small well is installed, there is a small blip in the groundwater table. By contrast, if a large well is placed with a large capacity pump, the groundwater table can be altered dramatically. Where there are many large wells, serious regional impacts can take place. The High Plains (Ogallala) aquifer that extends from South Dakota to Texas has been over-pumped for decades, resulting in a lowering of the groundwater table in some areas of over 150 feet. This significant drawdown forces other groundwater users to deepen their wells, increasing their costs and energy requirements. This “mining” of water has created a net loss of groundwater in the High Plains of 340 km³. What would be the effect if this volume of water was taken from Lake Michigan? If spread out over the surface area, this would reduce the lake level by 20 feet.

Large wells can also dry up springs and streams. The most vulnerable springs and streams are those near the headwaters, where flowing tributary groundwater is limited. Ironically, due to FDA requirements, this area is where bottled water companies must install their wells if they want to label the bottle “Spring Water.” Pump a gallon out of the ground in these areas and you lose a gallon in the stream.

Groundwater, springs, wetlands, rivers and lakes are all interconnected. To care about one, is to care about all. Are we taking care of our groundwater in Michigan?

To be continued next time.

Note: I have simplified the discussion above to aid in understanding. Hydrogeology is complicated by a combination of confined, unconfined and perched aquifers, separated by discontinuous layers of less permeable soils (silt, clay and glacial till). In addition, we only know for sure what we find in a soil boring at a specific location, and we must then interpolate between the borings. Our knowledge is dependent on the funds available to install multiple borings.

Fracking: It’s All About the Water

Published on November 15th, 2013 by - H2Olson

Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for oil and gas in Michigan is the subject of scrutiny in the recent Integrated Assessment report series from the University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute.  The report confirms that the future development of tight shale formations appears to be massive and intensive in size and scope and will require unprecedented quantities of water to explore and produce these reserves.

How are oil and natural gas wells are being developed in fracking?
First a large pad is cleared, then as many as 6 or more wells are drilled on this one pad known as a “resource hub,” Then, several of these “resource hubs” are developed within close proximity to each other. Clusters of these hubs are then widely developed across townships and counties. Over the next several years, just one oil and gas company, Encana, plans to develop as many as 500 hundred wells in Kalkaska County, Michigan. Each resource hub can consume 90 to 180 millions of gallons of fresh water or more. The most recent numbers in Kalkaska County, Michigan—where fracking operations of this intense nature are underway—show that a group of these hubs in close proximity are presently using or plan to use more than 618 million gallons of water. As fracking expands in Kalkaska, reports indicate that number will be in the billions.

How will these unprecedented water withdrawals impact the groundwater and the streams and lakes within the watershed where the fracking is occurring?
The answer is no one knows. Current Michigan DNR and DEQ procedures do not measure the cumulative impact of these numerous wells and resource hubs on a local watershed and the impact on the nearby streams and lakes in that watershed. Each well permit which includes the amount of water withdrawn is approved independent of each other and does not take into account the amount of water withdrawn by the other wells on the pad and nearby hubs. It’s as if the other wells did not exist.

This is deeply concerning when put in the broader context of Michigan groundwater withdrawals. Bridge Magazine recently reported that 12 Michigan counties are already facing groundwater shortages. In light of present groundwater availability concerns, the increased consumption of groundwater for fracking operations will likely exacerbate the situation. Under current DEQ procedures for oil and gas drilling permits, there is no assurance our government can or will adequately protect our groundwater, lakes, and streams from these current and future massive water withdrawals.

What happens to all this water?
To frack the shale gas or oil reserves deep underground, these massive quantities of water are mixed with a cocktail of chemicals, many hazardous and/or known carcinogens, and sand. In Michigan, after a well is fracked, the contaminated water (“flowback”) is not treated, but is transported and disposed of in deep injection wells. What this means is that such massive quantities of water will never return to to the water cycle. We consider this a “consumptive” use of water. Other major concerns include the handling of the contaminated water. And, fracking is exempt from key federal and state regulation, including the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. In short, these massive quantities of water are gone forever after used in the fracking process.

What can be done?
FLOW’s Chairperson, Jim Olson, and Executive Director, Liz Kirkwood, submitted comments to the Graham Institute. To strengthen water resource protections, FLOW recommends that the State of Michigan:

  • Require development plan(s) and generic or cumulative environmental impacts and alternatives as required under the Michigan Environmental Protection Act (MEPA) before a lease or leases and permit or permits are finally approved or denied;
  • Refine and strengthen all aspects of the Michigan Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool (WWAT) and require baseline hydrogeological studies and pump aquifer yield tests; and
  • Encourage cooperation between state regulations and appropriate local regulation of land use, water use, and related activities to address potential local impacts.

To learn more about FLOW’s research and recommendations, please read our Executive Summary or our Full Recommendations submitted by Olson and Kirkwood to the Graham Institute.

For more about FLOW’s work on fracking, visit flowforwater.org/fracking