When you run out of surface water you stop farming and build a dam or a canal. When you run out of groundwater you dig a deeper well and get a bigger pump. Out of sight, out of mind. There-in lies the problem. Groundwater in the west, especially in the basin fill aquifers of Utah and the Great Basin, is generally on the decline. Historically replenished by the deep snowpack high in the surrounding mountains, these aquifers are declining from over pumping beyond the sustainable yield of the natural snowmelt recharge. As the water level in these underground sponges declines we start pumping ancient water from previous ice ages and from the ancestral Rockies 50-300 million years ago. This is one time water that is not coming back. This needs to change.
We complain about all the change in Park City but what if we
didn’t change. Cities and economies are
like swimming sharks, if they stop swimming they die. We don’t want to go backwards. It is easier to balance a glass of wine on a
bowling bowl than it is for a place to remain the same, stationary, or
sustainable. So, we take all the change
and growth, development and upgrades, as we morph into something new, and
hopefully better. Unfortunately, that takes water. Even though we have money and pump half of our
water over Promontory, from the Weber river, we are still mining local groundwater
that was snow 500 years ago on the Wasatch and 16,000 years ago on the Uintas. We are deficit spending, and we just can’t
print more water like we do money and keep the change.
The more
than 1000 miles of mine tunnels under our town, longer than the NYC subway
system, acts as a huge underdrain, further lowering the historical ground water
levels. With the modern change from mining and
agricultural water use to municipal use by people, the changing demand has warranted
a new 100 million dollar mine-water treatment plant to augment the exaction of
our regional groundwater by wells. Municipal wells in the Park City area therefore withdraw
water from consolidated rocks, such as the fractured and faulted, Keetley volcanics,
Weber quartzite, Park City limestone and Navajo/Nugget sandstone. These rock formations are locally broken into
separate block formations that can inhibit or isolate water flow and
withdrawal, which can make finding reliable water difficult. Park City’s ground water is geologically compartmentalized
and better on the east side, but recharge is not meeting demand for a
sustainable yield. Because of the low
capacity for bedrock ground water storage, the hydrological system is very
dependent on the amount of annual precipitation and is therefore sensitive to
prolonged drought and climate change.
Less than normal precipitation, or overuse, can result in substantial
groundwater level decline, both in the bedrock (affecting municipal wells), and
in the basin fill (affecting stream flow), producing anecdotal and visible change.
The Colorado River and the Great Salt Lake are suffering
likewise, partially because of our inability to limit groundwater usage in
these basins that have a conjugate effect on surface water deliveries. Both The Lake and The River are shrinking
from overuse of surface and ground water.
Many agricultural water users in Utah have Supplemental Water Rights that
allow them to take surface or groundwater, whichever is more prevalent or convenient. The State of Utah has regulated surface water
use since 1903 and groundwater use since 1935, but both have been systematically
overallocated on paper, relying on priority dates rather than regulatory restraint. The Sate Engineer tried to rescue the worst
over-pumped and overallocated groundwater basins in Utah, back to
sustainability, at the turn of this century but the legislature, in their
infinite wisdom, insisted that we give water users 100 years to comply with
reductions. California has only been
regulating groundwater since it got scarce 10 years ago, but they give their
water users a similar ridiculous time frame to achieve compliance and
sustainability. In Texas, the biggest
pump wins and they won’t change. They
are not thinking of the future and the children, land subsidence or aquifer
health, it is just mindless “Drill Baby Drill.”
Over pumping can cause the collapse of the aquifer and
subsidence of surrounding surface lands but the practice is relatively new and is
not confined locally. Since the
development of submersible well pumps for oil in the 1920’s and perfection of
their application for water in the 1960’s these aquifer wells, and their surface
telltale crop circles, have proliferated across the western United States. The Ogallala aquifer is 175,000 square miles
and 500 feet thick and extends from South Dakota to New Mexico and from Texas
to Wyoming. It is being depleted 2-3
times as fast as it is recharging and could be gone by 2100. By then agriculture in the Great Plains could
be radically changed with the old, imported cattle that require imported feed
and water, replaced by the historical residents, the American Buffalo, Bison-Bison. These Bison are the only living creature
uniquely suited to live in that harsh climate, that spans 150 degrees F, and the
limited surface water vegetation complex.
That might be a welcomed change.
We cannot continue this selfish mining of historical, ancient groundwater. which can be a metaphor for how we treat all of our Natural Resources, using them up until they are gone. To leave it up to the private sector, the profit motive, or human nature does not work in maintaining a sustainable yield and public welfare. Locally we need to empower the State Engineer to step in and regulate this public resource for the common good. She (Tereasa Wilhelmsen, PE) is doing her job, for she would be blamed if we run out of water, but her hands are tied by the shortsighted capitalistic, male, Mormon, developer dominated legislature. This is not socialism, it is the law, written to promote fair, sustainable growth and wise, conservative use for the public benefit. What is out of sight cannot be out of mind. Nationally and globally, we need to see our shortsighted abuse of water and our natural resources and change our ways. Think globally, conserve locally.
