'Beating' the Southeast USA Drought: Them That Has, Gets

Colleague Sam Chan sent me this story by Alyssa Abkowitz from the 31 July 2008 Wall Street Journal. The photos and the graph are from the article.

The story describes how some people in the Southeast USA are "beating" the watering restrictions imposed by places like Atlanta and Raleigh. How? By drilling wells, which they use for landscape watering and swimming pools. Since many of these wells are quite deep - some up to 600 feet or so - they're not cheap, so most of these people are well-heeled.

Metro Atlanta's water restrictions from midnight to 10 AM do not apply to well owners who pump fewer than 100,000 gallons per day. What? 100,000 gallons per day? That is over 110 acre-feet per year! 

The residential pumpers see nothing wrong with what they are doing. Why should they feel guilty? They are not taking water from some beleaguered municipal water supply, such as Lake Lanier that supplies the Atlanta metro water system. That is surface water, and these rich folks are pumping ground water. Never the twain shall meet, right?

That's not necessarily true. The water they pump ultimately would flow to some surface water body, perhaps in the Chattahoochee River basin (for those pumping in the Atlanta area), or perhaps some other stream system far away from Atlanta. But the truth is that these folks are in fact using someone else's water. By pumping ground water, they are likely reducing the discharge somewhere else.  

"We're not draining Lake Lanier here," said one resident of the upscale Buckhead section of Atlanta. Well, good for you.

For illustrative purposes, here is a simplistic schematic of what happens when a well pumps from an aquifer (from USGS Circular 1186). When the well is turned on (Figure B), it intercepts water that would ultimately flow to a stream. Under certain conditions, the well can even derive some of its discharge from the stream (Figure C).

 

Sure, one well is not going to seriously impact someone else's water. But what about 100, 1,000, or 5,000 wells?

I used to get this claptrap all the time when I lived in the Albuquerque area. "I'm not part of the problem, because I have my own well." Well, yeah, but 10,000 other people have "their own wells" and are sucking from the same aquifer that you and the City of Albuquerque both use. Your straws may be smaller and shallower, but it's the same source.

I'd say to people: "You want to know who's responsible for the area's water shortage? Look in the mirror."

I would make the same case in Atlanta that I made in New Mexico: you're sucking water from the same source, it's just that the connection is less obvious.

Here are comments from Jim Kennedy, Georgia's state geologist.

Despite the I-own-what's-under-my-house laws, too much pumping can lower the amount of groundwater if there are a lot of wells in one area that yield a significant amount of water, says Jim Kennedy, Georgia's state geologist. In Atlanta, Dr. Kennedy says most of the wells don't yield more than a modest 15 gallons a minute -- making them self-limiting. However in extreme cases, over-pumping can lead to land subsidence.

"If people develop a lot of wells in an area, we could get into a situation where pumping water out of fractured rock could deplete or dry up a creek," Dr. Kennedy says. "But we're not at that point yet."

Perhaps Kennedy's agency could help enlighten locals about the source of their well water. Some outreach would be helpful.

Kennedy's right about the generally low-yielding wells in the Atlanta area, which sits atop "hard" rocks, such as igneous and metamorphic rocks that generally don't produce high well yields unless you tap into a big fracture that is connected to a surface water body. These fractured-rock aquifers don't have a lot of storage, so when you pump them, they are more likely to draw water from a stream or lake.

It's Garrett Hardin's "tragedy of the commons": the problem with a "common pool resource". I think higher water rates are in order (David Zetland would be proud of me).

So are these folks violating the law? Nope. Are they doing the right thing? Only if you consider selfishness a virtue.

"Character is doing what's right, even if no one is looking." -- Unknown

Comments

[Todd]

The same problem has been underway in Australia for the past year. Makes me want to be back in the well drilling business.