Ground Water Analysis in the Eastsound Area

The alleged ground water shortage in Eastsound is grossly exaggerated. This is not a scientifically sound reason to call for a moratorium on land owners drilling private (exempt) well. People would not want to drill a well if they could buy Eastsound Water Users' Association (EWUA) memberships. The real problem is time and money needs to be spent developing the storage, treatment and infrastructure. There is no credible health risk to the community from properly constructed private wells (WA. Dept of Health).

Budget calculations to evaluate groundwater are just like a financial balance sheet with a regular schedule of deposits and withdrawals. Rainfall is a deposit. Water drawn from a well is a withdrawal. Drawing the water out of a private residential (exempt) well is the same as drawing from EWUA wells.

Let us examine the data given by the EWUA scientifically. Claims in EWUA's Hydrological report (2/9/04 draft) imply that there are at least 75 exempt wells in the Eastsound area that will each pump 5000 gallons per day 365 days a year AND NOT ONE DROP of the 137  million gallons per year pumped from these wells ever gets back into the ground. If this were true, there would be streams running down the streets of Eastsound!

Vicki Heater with the county Health and Community Services provided a reference that suggests using 334 gal/day for an exempt well is a good working number. And most of this ends up back in the ground. This is far less than the 5000 gal/day claimed by EWUA.

The draft documents dated 2/19/04 EWUA submitted to the county did not include the recharge of the aquifer from domestic septic systems and gardens. Dept of Ecology guidelines show this to be a very significant volume of water.

Revising the ground water model to include recharge of the aquifer by domestic septic systems and gardens will increase the estimate water available from the aquifer. Vicki Heater provided a reference suggesting a good working estimate is that 75% of the water discharged into residential septic systems recharges the groundwater. This is an enormous volume.

The BOCC, Dr. James and Mr. Tompkins are urged to treat the draft reports as very preliminary until the engineers have had a chance to evaluate the proposed updates and new data. I think they will agree the model can be refined and better data on the expected use by exempt wells has been provided (Thanks Vicki). The Dept of Ecology guidelines are allowing the watershed planning groups tremendous flexibility to use good science. The real health risks to the watershed come from bad septic systems or the improper use of toxic chemicals, pesticides and fertilizers, not private exempt wells.

Everyone agrees there are not enough EWUA memberships available at the moment. But the primary problem is not that the aquifer is allegedly oversubscribed. The Hydrologic Report submitted by EWUA dated 2/9/2004 includes a graph (fig 5) of the water level of Green Well #8. This DOE data shows the average water table level has an UPWARD trend. All levels reported since 1994 have been higher than the highest point between 1979 and 1986. Fig 7 goes on to show that there is no evidence of saltwater intrusion.

There have also been two recent reports in the Sounder that Cascade Lake can “comfortably support 50,000 people.” Using the San Juan County average of 100 gal/day per person this would amount to 5,600 acre ft/yr. For Cascade Lake with a surface area of 172 acres (per San Juan County Characterization report) this corresponds to a draw of 32 ft. You might see half of this during a 6-month drought with little recharge. The area of the lake would be reduced as it was drawn down giving it that California reservoir look. Some of us are not comfortable with this, to say the least!

The water supply for the Eastsound area is a very tough problem. It needs to be addressed using good science and open discussions, not hyperbole and rumors. This problem has been around for years with hundreds of people waiting to get memberships. The recent exaggerated alarms about there being a shortage of available water and moratoriums on exempt wells are distracting everyone from the real problems that EWUA needs to spend time and money on.

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Sandy Taylor 

Olga