Groundwater and Surface Water - hey, it's all water

We all know the water cycle... rain and snow falls from the sky, soaks into the ground, runs into streams, rivers, lakes, oceans.  The linkage of all these water systems is what makes life possible here on Earth, and our disruption of the cycle comes at our own risk.   When groundwater is depleted, streams don't flow, lakes dry up and people don't have water in their wells to drink. 

The video to the right shows how contamination affects our water supplies.   

The LWV UMRR blog is going to focus on groundwater for the next few months.  This month we have two posts on the transfer of groundwater from state to state and country to country through bottled beverages and agricultural products.  In "Exporting Water from the Mississippi - one 0.5liter Bottle at  a Time", we take a look at the efforts of Niagara Bottling to site water bottling facilities in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  This California company is seeking to expand in areas where cities will use their water supplies to encourage economic growth - the catch is that municipal water supplies are rated a higher priority than industrial uses, so an industrial use of municipal water takes advantage of a loophole in the system.  The second post, "Groundwater is moving across the world in products" looks at the use of Arizona groundwater to raise alfalfa for dairy herds in Saudi Arabia.  Arizona passed an act requiring the big cities to manage groundwater sustainably, but that law does not apply outside these major population centers... another loophole being exploited to access water.  

Minnesota also passed a Ground Water Protection Act, back in 1989.  The Minnesota Ground Water Association charged a team with developing a white paper that looks at implementation of the Act in the past 30 years, and then looks ahead to what more needs to be done.  (You can view a video on this Act and White Paper at this link.)  One issue that stands out through all of these is the movement of water from one state, or one country, to another.  Without clear policies to govern sharing (and not sharing) of water, there will be piecemeal protections and continuing over-withdrawals.  

Our April 3 meeting will focus on groundwater and surface water in the Driftless Area.  We will talk about how groundwater moves from the surface, through the ground, to come to the surface again in this Karst landscape, and then look at specific examples of how land use and drinking water quality are as integrally linked as surface and groundwater are.  We will get out specifics on this expanded educational program in our next newsletter.    The video to the right is an excellent presentation of how pollution moves in Karst.  ​