ATLANTA | Of all the factors swirling around the issue of storing surface water in the Floridan Aquifer, the most important one may just be trust.
That’s because experts disagree on the potential benefits and risks or even the number of existing aquifer-storage sites in the United States, and critics don’t believe supporters’ stated motives.
What side you’re on probably boils down to simply who you trust.
The practice of aquifer storage and recovery, ASR for short, involves injecting treated surface water into an underground aquifer where it is kept until pumped back up for use. It’s a way to capture water when it’s plentiful for use when it’s not. It is used in other places around the world, from Florida, Texas and California to New Zealand, Taiwan and Kuwait. There needs to be porous underground rock, which makes most of North Georgia unsuited but South Georgia and some of Northwest Georgia possible.
The concern is that a mistake could ruin the quality of the water already in the aquifer, spoiling the entire water supply.
Coastal lawmakers like then-Rep. Anne Mueller, R-Savannah, passed legislation to stop a private company from beginning an ASR development, and for 15 years, the state had a moratorium against ASR in the 11 coastal counties.
“I fought it for 20 years up here because nobody could answer my questions,” she told a Senate committee last week in Atlanta.
While the company found other ways to make money, the issue of using the aquifer as a piggy bank didn’t disappear.
AQUIFER STORAGE TESTS IN GEORGIA
A test of the concept by Dalton Utilities begun in 2009 was unsuccessful because the drilling never accessed suitable rock formations. Another test is ongoing in Baker County below Albany with drilling that begins Monday.
Officials with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division say the new experiment is to boost stream flows during drought as a way to preserve rare plants and animals so federal wildlife officials won’t impose drastic constraints on farmers who irrigate. Environmentalists say the real reason is to replace water flow from metro Atlanta’s withdrawals in order to keep Alabama and Florida from suing over it and blocking Peach State economic growth.
In the meantime, the coastal ASR moratorium expired July 1. Sen. William Ligon, R-Brunswick, had pushed legislation to renew it, but he hit a brick wall when the chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, Sen. Ross Tolleson, R-Perry, announced he would never allow a vote on it. Although he opposes a moratorium, Tolleson opted for a committee to study the issue, one he chairs.
“My opinion is sound science needs to be done to study it,” he said.
ASR NEEDED TO ADAPT TO SAVANNAH’S SALTWATER INTRUSION
The EPD’s lobbyist, Russ Pennington, agrees. He argues that saltwater is seeping into the Floridan Aquifer which will eventually leave Savannah needing a new water supply.
“We have saltwater intrusion coming,” Pennington said. “It’s not an imminent problem, but it will be.”
Mueller doesn’t believe him, even though wells in Hilton Head, S.C., already draw saltwater out of the aquifer.
“Why should we trust the EPD when they allowed unpermitted discharges into the Ogeechee (River) for eight years?” she said.
She’s referring to a textile company that exceeded the authority on its permit to pump waste into the river, eventually triggering the state’s largest fish kill when drought conditions in 2011 could not dilute the illegal chemicals.
Pennington notes that South Georgia’s flat terrain makes traditional reservoirs impractical because there are no valleys to flood, leaving the aquifer as the remaining option as an underground reservoir. Skeptics wonder why a city next to a river named for it and other rivers nearby even needs a reservoir to replace the aquifer when the salt water intrusion becomes a problem.
“It’s important you understand ASR is not without risks,” said Chris Manganiello, policy director for the Athens-based Georgia River Network.
POSSIBLE RISKS
Earthquakes, for one, according to Clay Montague, a retired professor of environmental engineering at the University of Florida whose academic research focused on beaches, estuaries and tidal wetlands. Injecting water under high pressure amounts to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, like what is used to extract oil and gas, only chemicals are involved as well in petroleum production.
Seismic activity is increasing in some new shale-oil fields, and he’s among the scientists who blame it on fracking. But other researchers say there’s no clear connection and that careful pressure adjustment minimizes the chances.
Soil instability may be remote. Most opponents express contaminating the existing water in the aquifer as their main concern. What is the likelihood of that if the water is treated before it’s injected?
June Mirecki, senior hydrogeologist in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Jacksonville office, says there can be problems with the biological byproducts of chemical disinfection, as has happened in some aquifers out west. That can be avoided by the extra expense of using ultraviolet light instead of chemicals to disinfect.
Another concern is that even disinfected surface water can cause problems when injected into some kinds of rock formations because its added oxygen reacts with pyrite crystals to release the mineral arsenic, which can be toxic in sufficient concentrations. Mirecki said careful management of the injection process in the Tampa area proved the arsenic will eventually settle to the bottom of the aquifer and remain there when water is pumped back up to the surface for use.
She noted that federal legislation signed this summer by President Barack Obama -- the same bill that opened the door to deepening the Savannah River shipping channel -- provides funding for ASR projects.
“I’d like to ask you to think about additional ASR systems,” she said.
Pennington called consideration of new projects premature in Georgia before more testing is completed.
POSSIBLE LEGAL ISSUES
If all the water-purity concerns can be resolved, there still are issues about the legal ramifications, according to Gil Rogers, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. It could create precedents that change property rights, he warns.
Who would own the water in the aquifer, whoever injects it or the landowners above? And will restricting access to surface water to property owners adjacent to streams in order to have sufficient supplies to pump into the ground change Georgia’s concept of riparian water rights?
“I think there are too many unanswered questions,” he said.
Florida has worked out answers that Georgia can consider copying.
To our south, Florida has anywhere from 80 to 200 ASR wells, depending on whose figures you trust. Some disputed number of them are in mothballs because ASR isn’t worthwhile for various economic or environmental reasons. That state even uses ASR in the same Upper Floridan Aquifer it shares with coastal Georgia.
ASR advocates argue that if Florida can work out the legal, financial and scientific wrinkles, then so can Georgia. Opponents point to the Sunshine State’s idle wells and warn that could be the experience on our side of the state line.
As the senators studying the issue weighs both sides, it will probably come down to who they believe.
Follow Walter Jones on Twitter @MorrisNews and Facebook or contact him at walter.jones@morris.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment