Water Works 21 - 4/3/03

Potential Drought Impacts Not Properly Evaluated

( The last excerpt from Fellow Correspondent’s letter to the NJDEP’s Water Supply Administration, arguing against its plan to increase the amount of groundwater pumped near Quakertown. )

Potential Impact of Proposed Irrigation Well on Other Wells.

This section of the NJGS report (i) projects well impacts over time and discusses the projected impact on individual wells, but there is a major omission. On page 12, the following statement appears:

“Both of these impacts could be greater during periods of the year when leakage to the water-bearing zones in well QVF-3 are diminished due to drought.”

The NJGS must evaluate the potential drought impacts. By the NJGS’s own admission, well failures occur during drought. Not providing a drought impact analysis is a serious omission.

The concern is that the NJGS has not fully appraised the thin soil zones and the rapid shut-down of the vertical leakage of water from the shallow soil zones. This is the same condition that the NJGS blames for the well failures in Quakertown.