Water connects islanders, is a focus in development

Published 7:00 pm Saturday, August 4, 2007

COUPEVILLE — A childhood rhyme tells rain, rain to go away. If that rhyme rang true and the rainfall ceased on Island County, a lot of people might get pretty thirsty 20 years from now.

Every glass of water Whidbey Islanders drink, every car they wash and every shower they take is supplied by a groundwater aquifer, which is fed only by rain.

As communities on Whidbey’s south end such as Freeland and Langley deal with growth management issues, they share issues and concerns about Island County’s water resources and how best to manage those resources.

Because Island County does not get water from any other source, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has designated the county as a sole-source aquifer.

“It doesn’t mean there is just one aquifer. What it means is that groundwater is your only source of water and if you lost your groundwater source, you’d be in trouble because there is no other source for you,” said Island County’s hydro-geologist, Doug Kelly.

Island County’s fresh water aquifers, he said, were formed when glaciers departed from Whidbey Island nearly 15,000 years ago leaving layers of water-bearing sand and gravel behind. Non-water bearing layers are called aquatards, and consist of silt and clay and act as filters and boundaries for aquifers, said Kelly.

Groundwater, as a sole-source of the island’s fresh or potable water, presents some challenges, however, to scientists like Kelly and can hinder development of urban areas.

One challenge to the county’s fresh water supply is that if unchecked water usage continues from a single aquifer, as a majority of the county’s wells have drilled into, the aquifers water level can drop. Because Whidbey Island is surrounded by Puget Sound, the aquifer runs the risk of contamination from what is called sea water intrusion, Kelly said.

“Sea water intrusion is the principle concern for water in this county,” he said. “With the aquifers generally connected to the Puget Sound, if you pull too much water from them, water levels will drop a little ways down, but when they reach near sea level, the salt water starts coming in. You end up with a salty aquifer.”

The proliferation of individual wells and the potential of drawing sea water into the aquifer as a result of those wells drawing from a single source caused sea water intrusion policy to be implemented at the state level with the Growth Management Act, said Kelly.

“The county has a sea water protection code. In 1991, Island County was the first county to create policy. We have, by far, the strictest code in the state. We actually regulate all the way down to individual wells,” he said. “If it is in an area where sea water intrusion is a problem, we say you cannot drill a well or use that well for a building permit.”

Another challenge Kelly sees is potential contamination of the aquifer during the well drilling process.

“Every hole that you drill creates a vulnerability to the water because almost everywhere in the county there are significant numbers of these layers of silt and clay that don’t stop flow downward, but slow it,” he said.

“They create a really good filter system so that contaminants that occur at land surface, whether natural or human-created, typically don’t make their way down through those big thick aquatards. When you punch a well through that aquatard, you have created a pathway vertically around that well.”

But there is a solution, said Kelly. It exists in the form of public water services and provides a number of benefits to all users of fresh water.

“One of the big benefits for public water systems is that they have the fiscal capacity to deal with problems should they occur,” he said.

“If Freeland grows, and they continue using their current well fields, and they begin to see problems, they have the financial capacity to drill a new well two miles away. No individual homeowner could afford to move a pipeline two miles inland and drill a new well.”

With a managed water service, there are fewer wells to be drilled, thus fewer ways for the groundwater to become contaminated, said Kelly.

Regular monitoring for salt and contamination is a third benefit.

“There is regular monitoring. Big water systems sample everything under the sun on a pretty regular basis,” he said. “Tiny water systems sample for almost nothing almost never and individual wells sample once and that is it. There is some assurance of water quality and management that goes on with bigger systems that does not occur with smaller ones.”

For Kelly, fresh uncontaminated water is vital to Island County’s health and managing that resource is the best way he sees to mitigate the risks to it.

“A managed water system is a good thing for the aquifer and for public health,” he said. “So both environmental and public health benefit from a managed water system as opposed to a whole bunch of individual wells.”

Spencer Webster can be reached at 221-5300 or swebster@southwhidbeyrecord.com.