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Water Conference submission to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee from Wenonah Hauter, director, Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program

March 9, 2005

Public Citizen, a national consumer-rights organization based in Washington D.C., welcomes Senators Domenici and Bingaman’s announcement of a bipartisan water conference and appreciates this opportunity to submit a proposal to the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee.

We would like to address Topic 5, Knowledge of Water Resources.

The political and economic pressure will always be to err on the side of growth, development and sprawl. History, as well as the “quality of life,” as the senators framed it in their topic for discussion, demands that we err on the side of protecting the resource.

There are famous examples— Owens Valley in California or the High Plains Aquifer—that demonstrate an inaccurate assessment of sustainability, at least historically. Supporters of new water developments, particularly, perhaps, in the West, are quick to reject those examples as excesses of the past that won’t or can’t happen again.

And yet water resources today are being plundered or targeted for plunder under the same threat of inadequate scientific understanding that has led to such disastrous water waste and resource depletions in the past.

For instance, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which views its role as a water procurement office to facilitate breakneck growth and sprawl for sprawl’s sake in the Las Vegas area, is proposing to pump as much as a quarter-million acre feet of groundwater out of an aquifer beneath rural lands to the north. Rural residents dependent on the groundwater have raised concerns, as have environmentalists, concerns which invariably are met with promises that every effort will be made to assure that the aquifer is not unduly depleted, that the environmental impact will be minimal, that the project will not constitute “another Owens Valley.” After all, there will be an Environmental Impact Statement.

The hydrological analysis component of the EIS will be prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey. A review of the USGS preliminary study plan by an independent hydrologist notes that the USGS must furnish its results by Dec. 1, 2007. Assuming monitoring equipment is already in place, there will only be two annual periods studied before the USGS must present its findings—findings that will be incorporated into an EIS preparatory to kicking off large-scale groundwater mining.

The USGS itself, in its Circular 1186, Sustainability of Ground-Water Resources, explains:

Knowledge of the sources and discharges of water to and from the system and how they change with continuing development is needed to understand the response of ground-water systems to development, as well as to aid in determining appropriate management strategies and future use of the resource.

Pumping and piping a quarter-million acre feet of water each year based on two years of annual study does not sound like, as the senators framed the topic for discussion, “the level of scientific understanding needed to assess accurately the sustainability of the surface and groundwater resources.” It does, however, sound like the level of scientific understanding needed to pretend that an assessment was conducted, then get on the stick and mine that aquifer so the growth industry can slap together some more strip malls and housing tracts in the exurbs of Las Vegas.

It’s worth nothing that the USGS budget for Water Resources Investigations was cut from $215 million in FY 2004 to $211 million in FY 2005. The FY 2006 budget proposal would reduce it to $204 million, and eliminate an estimated 126 jobs. While USGS hydrological studies are often funded by outside sources such as other government agencies leading an environmental review process, reduced funding for water research does not bode well for the priority, properly identified by the senators, of increasing our level of scientific understanding of sustainability.

Moreover, the prospect of a reduced USGS budget has already raised concerns that scientific analysis of water resources will be compromised. For example, as reported in the Billings Gazette, the Casper Star-Tribune and other area media, the leaner USGS budget would mean the end of collecting baseline data for surface water quality related to coalbed methane development in Montana and Wyoming.

Of course, skyrocketing coalbed methane production has been the mineral industry story in the Rocky Mountain region over the last several years, and the concomitant threat to surface and groundwater has raised the hackles of ranchers and affected communities.

But pumping groundwater to work mineral resources is in fact a very old story in the West. Paralleling the spin that accompanies groundwater pumping for urban sprawl’s domestic consumption, regulators and minerals industry officials routinely assure a skeptical public that the excesses of the past are, well, passed, and gone are the days of wasting so much water that it will take a century for a water table to recharge.

Ending collection of surface water baseline data in connection with coalbed methane development does not sound like, as the senators framed the topic for discussion, “the level of scientific understanding needed to assess accurately the sustainability of the surface and groundwater resources.” It does, however, sound like the level of scientific understanding needed to shield natural gas producers from an aggrieved public hoping to protect the resource.

Recommendations

Commit the nation to scientific assessments of water resources. The Interior Department’s Water 2025 program notes that the Bureau of Reclamation has prepared an analysis and identified potential areas of impending water crises. The Department states that it “intends to seek extensive input” to refine the analysis. Meantime, prior legislative efforts, such as the 21st Century Water Commission Act, have called for establishment of a commission primarily to study the ways in which the nation’s water supply can be increased.

Increasing the water supply may be difficult, inasmuch as whoever made it isn’t making anymore. It would be preferable, then, to establish a commission to study the water we already have.

A national study of water resources, particularly of Western water resources, could be a huge step toward assuring that as the region attempts to wrestle with its growth, water decisions are, indeed, based on a level of scientific understanding that accurately assesses the sustainability of surface and ground water resources.

Meantime, restoring the U.S. Geological Survey’s budget for water resources investigations would be a good start.

Resist any attempts to “streamline” or curtail the level of scientific analysis required under federal environmental laws, treaties or other areas of federal jurisdiction in connection with the development of water resources. Embrace recommendations that tie future water development to more rigorous—and well-funded—scientific assessment.

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