For the week of March 26 - April 1, 2003

‘Enough water, here?’

Experts seek answer

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By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer

When strangers learn that Lee Brown is a consultant on water, the inevitable question usually is, "Do we have enough water?"

His answer: it depends on what questioners mean.

Although Americans take drinking water for granted like their electricity, Brown says the question of sufficient water supplies is complicated by factors such as population growth trends, conservation and recycling, climate, psychological expectations and surface vs. groundwater supplies.

Brown has joined with The Nature Conservancy to develop a trend-tracking computer program that measures the ups and downs of water reserves in the Wood River Valley.

Brown and Mark Davidson, the Conservancy’s Silver Creek preservation manager, told Blaine County commissioners on Monday that they’re well on the way to creating a "systematic, thorough (computer) model" of Wood River water activity dating back to the 1940s.

The database, Brown said, is built around 500 wells scattered along the Wood River area in eight townships and ranges from Picabo on the south to Hulen Meadows on the north.

Brown and Davidson said they’ve painstakingly sifted through state and local water records to build available year-by-year measurements of water to determine trends, if any, in the water table’s gains or losses.

They gave commissioners copies of computer readouts with a dizzying compilation of year-by-year water table depths at hundreds of sites.

"Blaine is way out ahead of the rest of the state" in tracking water supplies, which Davidson described as "a hot button issue" in arid western states.

As a general rule, Brown said, more water is coming in than going out. But trying to draw a single conclusion about the groundwater aquifer from which Blaine draws its supplies is risky.

"Some of the water table is going up, some coming down," Brown said.

"We’re moving ever so cautiously" in reaching any conclusions, he said, and "resisting the urge to come up with quick results. We’re close to having some generalities."

In some places, a well might have to be sunk 300 feet to reach water, he said, while in other places water literally is on the surface.

Brown and Davidson said they are hopeful of obtaining funds and personnel from various sources to establish an ongoing monitoring program of at least 25 wells to track water consumption and replenishment activity in perpetuity.

Commission chairman Dennis Wright and Commissioners Mary Ann Mix and Sarah Michael agreed the study project was valuable and asked Brown and Davidson to return with further progress reports.

 

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