Water Works 36 - 11/17/03

Trapped between a Rock and Something Much Harder

As we wait to see whether the NJDEP shoots itself in only one foot at a time or both feet at once, in this matter of Quakertown’s water, we can afford a more laid-back pace than this series kept before my break.

If you felt I crammed a lot into those last episodes, you were right. I was in a hurry to set the stage for the big decision we thought the state would make in August that it still hasn’t made. Now it has two decisions to make. For at least this episode, don’t worry about any loose ends I’ve left dangling in our story. I’ll tie them up soon enough. To be blunt – the NJDEP just handed me more fun than I ever imagined I would have doing this, so please pardon me while I indulge myself.

The state’s designation of Lockatong Creek as a C-1 stream only compounds its problem here. Before, all it had to worry about was its plan to increase water mining in the upper Lockatong watershed. Now it has to justify the water already being pumped from our aquifer too. Remember, the NJDEP has endorsed water extractions here for years amounting to at least five times what its own Master Plan says should have been pumped without impact studies. It never conducted any studies. If the point of a C-1 re-class is to prohibit degradation of a stream’s water, is it unreasonable to ask whether sucking that much groundwater from the Lockatong’s headwaters has already degraded them, even if whatever is left squeaks past C-1 standards? Especially since the state’s endorsement of eighty percent of that pumping violated state guidelines?

To grasp what we’re up against, you have to realize that no one – I repeat, no one – at the NJDEP finds that disturbing in any way. But at least it takes less explaining elsewhere than it used to. The state’s bout of bureaucratic schizophrenia over Sidney Brook and Rockaway Creek last year took care of that. It was almost a relief to see other folks like us outraged by what we’ve lived with for years – the NJDEP’s lack of control over its periodic impulses to destroy the water supplies it’s supposed to protect. Before then, we almost felt as if we were trapped in some parallel universe with our Environmental Protection Agency’s Evil Twin. Top that with watching any state bureaucrat or politician who is not actually stealing your water vanish at any mention of “Quakertown,” “water,” and “NJDEP,” for several years running, and you might start to sound like this yourself.

Since Capoolong Creek has been a C-1 stream for years, the Lockatong’s C-1 re-class means the upper reaches of both watersheds – including everything in sight around Quakertown – have been officially deemed critical drinking water resources by the state. You are not just taking my word for it anymore. (Map) With that in mind, have a look at what Water Works 3 has to say about “chronic drought syndrome.” If you can reconcile a pair of C-1 streams with that, let me know, because I can’t.

It’s time to invite Wilfredo into our story again, since we have now returned to where I left both of you last summer in Water Works 34. As promised, we will take what we have learned about our local water supply system, have a look around, and compare our findings to the NJDEP’s. The difference in our approach is we take Pareto seriously and the state can’t afford to. In other words, we’re going to consider all the relevant data at once, precisely what the state won’t do. Aside from outright misrepresentations, like its use of Walnut Creek to calculate our aquifer’s recharge, and the distortions of geography and topography involved in its very definition of our watershed, we have not yet touched the real foundation of the state’s case: willful denial of the obvious.

Here is an example of what I mean. That greenswale below Quakertown Road where we stood before my break is where the most wells have failed in and around Quakertown. The NJDEP blamed those failures on drought. As you recall, that swale is a natural collector of groundwater, and by far the wettest part of the village. The NJDEP’s explanation for the failed wells there means our groundwater is depleted to the extent that shallower wells cannot survive a drought precisely where they should be least likely to fail. That is practically a definition of the water withdrawal limit that should have been imposed by any responsible calculation of our aquifer’s productivity.

We will learn how our NJDEP handled that particular “finding of fact,” among others, when I return.

Ron Gutkowski