NOREEN: Pay attention to that giant sucking sound
If we search desperately for silver linings during this recession, we could say that with the decline in growth, the rate at which groundwater is being mined from the Denver Basin aquifer has not increased much.
Well-drilling “has slowed down considerably,” said Gary Grant of the Falcon-based Barnhart Pump Co. Mostly, he said, business has been confined to re-drilling old wells that have failed, while only a few new wells are going in.
If this sounds like grasping at straws, consider that there are roughly 22,000 straws sucking water out of the ground in northern and eastern El Paso County. Because many of the wells are not metered, no one knows how much water is being drawn out of the basin; we only know that much more water is being taken out annually than flows in.
In El Paso and Douglas counties, which grew quickly before the recession, thousands of people are dependent on a depleting groundwater system each year. It is one of the biggest, most under-reported stories in Colorado and if it ever makes big headlines, it will be because a catastrophe has already arrived.
“It’s a story people really don’t want to hear about,” says Bob Raynolds, a research associate for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. “It’s being kept under the rug.”
Raynolds has been studying the basin, which formed slowly over eons, for years. “Water levels have dropped 30 feet a year in some areas in Douglas County,” he said.
There have been some declines reported in El Paso County, too, but groundwater levels vary from location to location and a sharp decline in one spot doesn’t carry over elsewhere. For a scientist like Raynolds, the cure is always more information, and the way to find out about groundwater is to monitor it in many locales.
“The state engineer recovers the data very haphazardly,” Raynolds said.
In El Paso County the data simply isn’t gathered. Developers must provide proof of a 300-year water supply but many are skeptical about such assurances and say independent monitoring would be better.
About five years ago, a small group of concerned well owners called Protect Our Wells (see my blog about POW) asked the county to start a monitoring program. The county declined.
If a monitoring well showed a sharp drop, you’d have to think twice about allowing an urban-style density there. Apparently some people don’t want to have to think twice about allowing development.
Grant said water levels in El Paso County have dropped substantially in the last 30-40 years, but he hasn’t seen drops in water levels in the past five years. He said the amount of groundwater available is “a total unknown. I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
Especially if we don’t even try to find out.
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