Water Works 48 - 4/9/04

The NJDEP Boldly Goes where No Man Has Gone Before

I probably startled you by dragging Franklin’s zoning into our story as abruptly as I just did, especially if you joined us after Water Works 33. I haven’t touched the subject since then. As you may recall, that episode explains the state’s duty to protect Quakertown’s water and recounts the lessons the NJDEP should have learned from Franklin’s Great Land Use War. Let’s return now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, to Franklin’s “highest of time” – as Thomas Hobbes once called his time in an England at war with itself – unless you would rather not be reminded of any part of that whole affair ever again. In that case, skip the next two paragraphs.

In 1995 Franklin proposed to re-zone the entire township. The measure set the minimum household lot size at 7 acres for more than two-thirds of the town – the area underlaid by Lockatong bedrock aquifers, including Quakertown. Down-zoning to 7 acres is hardly exceptional in Hunterdon now, but it was very controversial then. A group of residents called the Concerned Citizens fought the plan stubbornly, and often brilliantly, in a campaign that lasted 2 years. Civic due diligence in Franklin took on an entirely new meaning for the duration. At times it seemed as if we had all gone slightly mad. Water Works himself once attended 25 public meetings and hearings in only 90 days, and there were dozens of people here whose efforts far exceeded that.

No municipal zoning ordinance in Hunterdon County ever received as much public scrutiny as ours. The aquifer recharge rates at the heart of our water protection plan were reviewed by 3 citizen committees, 2 geologic consulting firms, the NJDEP’s own Geologic Survey and the Franklin Planning Board. Our Township Committee took 5 months to finally vote the plan in. Later, it was upheld by an appellate court. The NJDEP was initially called into the controversy by the opponents of the new zoning, and it worked closely with us for more than a year. When our planning board adopted the proposal (i) in 1997, the NJDEP publicly defended it.

That result ratified what more than 30 years of research on the geology of the Hunterdon Plateau had already confirmed. Haig Kasabach summed it up best in an early, 1966 study: “The Lockatong Formation is one of the poorest sources of ground water in New Jersey.” (ii) Mr. Kasabach’s observation should not be taken lightly. He was later appointed New Jersey’s State Geologist.

Franklin’s current zoning for the Quakertown area is actually based on more liberal estimates of our aquifer’s recharge rate than other well-known studies of aquifers like ours would have dictated. S.E. Posten’s findings (iii) in 1984 and Robert Hordon’s (iv) in 1987, for example, indicate that the minimum lot size requirement here should be larger than 7 acres. (33)

The relationship between our zoning and aquifer recharge is simple. Every acre of land delivers a predictable amount of water to the bedrock below it. (32) Together, the soil, the bedrock and the water stored in the rock filter and dilute contaminants, including septic system effluent, nitrogen by-products from fertilizers, and the arsenic and lead that naturally leach from Lockatong shale. The number of acres of land needed to supply safe drinking water to a single household here is calculated from the amount of water needed to dilute one of those contaminants – the nitrogen by-products – to safe levels. That method for determining the carrying capacity of land is known as a “nitrate dilution” model. Aquifer recharge maintains the critical level of water in our bedrock that makes the whole system work. (47)

Pumping too much water from any aquifer degrades water purity. Pumping water from Quakertown’s aquifer at high rates in intense concentrations (38) compounds that problem, because our Lockatong bedrock is prone to what geologists call “vertical leakage.” Water migrating downward through the rock normally descends slowly, through small, scarce vertical fractures. (32) Wells draw most of their water from layers of horizontal fractures – the aquifer’s bedding planes. (31) When the demands of intense pumping exceed what the bedding planes can deliver, water is sucked down through the verticals. Increased vertical movement of water in aquifers like ours increases concentrations of arsenic, lead and fecal coliform, short-circuiting the purification process and sending pollutants into the water we drink.

That may explain why elevated levels of arsenic and fecal coliform have turned up in our water for years. It’s less certain than other, undeniable evidence that water mining here has depleted our water supply beyond its ability to recover – like vanishing wetlands, chronic low flows in Lockatong Creek, and failed household wells. The results of what is now nearly 40 years of research, including the NJDEP’s own work with us, all say the NJDEP should have rolled back the amount of water pumped here, years ago. It has not, which begs the obvious question – “Why not?”

Ron Gutkowski