U.S. Water News Online
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- The state's new environmental chief has a message for Pennsylvanians -- there isn't water, water, everywhere, and it's time to thin k about ensuring that everyone has a drop to drink.
David E. Hess, the new secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, estimated that fewer than one-half of 1 percent of Pennsylvania municipalities know how much water they have available and how much they use.
After droughts in four of the last six years, Hess is making water resources a priority on his agenda in the remaining 19 months of the Ridge administration.
``You have sort of symptoms all over the place of water issues that no one is really dealing with in a coordinated way,'' he said.
Hershey geologist Richard Wright said water consumption in Pennsylvania is like someone withdrawing from a bank account without knowing the balance. Only in a drought year, when the ``account'' is overdrawn, does anyone seem to think about the water supply, he said.
``We absolutely do not know (Pennsylvania's) water budget,'' Wright said.
``We don't know if there will be enough water for the next housing development (or) power plant,'' watershed conservation director Stuart Gansell admitted at a forum in Harrisburg.
With new development, the amount of water used per person has risen 1,200 percent over the last 100 years, and water resources have also been strained by frequent droughts. Officials are hampered by a 25-year-old state water plan and a 62-year-old law that addresses only a small number of users.
Deputy secretary for water management Lawrence C. Tropea Jr. said the first step will be to determine the state's water resources. To that end, the department has been holding 15 water forums wound up recently.
``Once we paint that picture accurately, then we really need to look at what are the water uses today and what will they be in the future and then do the math,'' Tropea said.
About 1,000 people have attended the hearings, and people across the state have said they are not satisfied with the current situation, he said. After the public comment is analyzed, the department will look at making some regulatory and policy changes and may seek some legislative solutions to improve water resource management.
``There certainly is a problem in some parts of the state already, and I think there's a developing problem statewide,'' said Robert Wendelgass, state director for the environmental group Clean Water Action.
In the Southeastern Pennsylvania Ground Water Protected Area, established in 1980 and encompassing 127 municipalities in Berks, Bucks, Chester, Lehigh and Montgomery counties, assessments have established that withdrawals of water exceed the supply or threaten to do so, Wendelgass said. About 1 million residents in the area rely on groundwater.
The situation is better in the middle of the state, said executive vice president Ted Gayman of Eichelberger's Inc., which drilled about 1,400 wells last year. He said there has probably been a slight increase in the number of wells that go dry or need deepening every year, ``but it has not been real significant.''
The state now sets no standards on private well drilling, although legislation was recently introduced to set minimum statewide construction standards for wells. Pennsylvania ranks second in the nation in number of wells, and 10,000 new ones are drilled annually.
The state plans a conservation campaign this fall to promote such technology as low-flush toilets and low-flow shower heads, officials said.
``We want to make water conservation a personal ethic for people, just like recycling is,'' Tropea said.
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