State seeing drop-off in water supplies Warning signs: Runoff, leaking pipes, deeper wells are signs

Denise Savageau, Greenwich conservation director, looks at a stream gauge on the Comley Avenue Bridge on Wednesday, June 29, 2011. Savageau is concerned about recurring droughts in Greenwich. Denise Savageau, Greenwich conservation director, looks at a stream gauge on the Comley Avenue Bridge on Wednesday, June 29, 2011. Savageau is concerned about recurring droughts in Greenwich. Photo: Helen Neafsey Photo: Helen Neafsey Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close State seeing drop-off in water supplies 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Could Connecticut be facing a water shortage? You're probably peeking out from under your umbrella, saying, "definitely not." How could it be, when the state typically gets 45 inches of precipitation a year, and data indicate this is increasing at roughly one inch a decade?

But ironic as it is, droughts are becoming more frequent.

Studies have shown Greenwich is slowly taking water out of the ground faster than it can be replenished, said Denise Savageau, conservation director for Greenwich, and the town is enacting drought restrictions about every three years as a result.

"Everyone thinks water shortages are exclusive to Arizona or other parts of the West," Savageau said. "But they're happening right here, too."

There are other signs around the state that drinking water supplies may be dwindling, including the unfixed leaky pipes and drying wells. Some experts say the solution may be to budget our water, just like we do our tax dollars.

Rainfall may be increasing, but precipitation patterns are changing, said James Belden, executive director of the Pomperaug River Watershed Coalition. That means the state, like the rest of the Northeast, is more prone to extreme floods in the spring and more severe droughts in the late summer and fall. Even though the rains are getting heavier, less water is probably getting into the ground because floodwaters tend to flow fast across the surface, instead of slowly percolating into the ground, Belden said. Impervious surfaces like driveways and sidewalks prevent any water from getting into the ground at all.

Also, the state is losing some of its water through its infrastructure. Because some of Connecticut's water pipes have been in the ground for 100 years or more, they are wearing out and cracking, according to a state Water Planning Council Advisory Group study. This means drinking quality water that has been taken from lakes, rivers, and underground reservoirs is leaking out of the system before it ever reaches a faucet.

The Advisory Group discovered water utilities would have to pay $70 million a year to fix the old pipes, but they actually spend $20 million a year overall. Thirty-five percent of the 17 water utilities in Connecticut don't replace old pipes at all, according to the Advisory Group's 2007 report.

Because of the economy, it would be an unrealistic expectation that water companies will ever get ideal funding, the Advisory Group said.

But a bigger problem is that water seems to be dwindling naturally.

A Western Connecticut State University professor who has done extensive research on water shortage problems in China is now exploring similar problems in his own neighborhood. Associate political science professor Chris Kukk said his curiosity was piqued after hearing anecdotal stories about friends having to dig deeper, as much as 300 feet, to get to their wells in Brookfield and Danbury.

So he gathered some students to create Stewards of Water Network. He sent them out to New Milford and Fairfield to gather information about water. They found almost 15 people in the two towns have had to re-drill their wells in the last five years. Most of the people had to drill down about 200 feet, said Rosanna Bruzzi, the project leader. One person had to add another 300 feet to his already 300-foot deep well, and another had to go down 400 feet. Some people abandoned their wells completely and tried drilling somewhere else.

"It's not necessarily due to lack of rainfall," Bruzzi said. "It's because of where the two towns actually sit, the rainfall causes so much flooding that there's no way to collect that excess water. I'm not sure why they haven't put in reservoirs. They say now that it's built up you can't put those things out there because it's an eyesore, but it's frustrating to me because you're allowing all this water to escape."

Information about Connecticut's total water supply is somewhat scant. The United States Geological Survey monitors water levels at 70 wells and 100 streams throughout the state. It used to record readings monthly. State budget cuts resulted in reducing monitoring wells and stream to 10 times a year. There could be further cuts in the 2012 budget, said Virginia De Lima, director of the USGS Connecticut Water Science Center.

Because of the cuts, "there is the possibility you could miss the highest or lowest levels of the year," De Lima said. "It's possible you could miss a measurement that could be significant."

Historically, the state has never had to "budget" its water, Savageau said. There was always enough. But a little less than 10 years ago, state officials began noticing drought patterns, and drought plans began popping up around the region.

Similarly, the Water Planning Advisory Group has begun asking if the state needs a plan to divvy up all the available water between the vying interests, from fisheries to manufacturing plants to golf courses.

"We have to establish how much they need, and compare it to how much clean water we have," Savageau said.

But attempts to control water use can quickly get political. For example, it has been five years since the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection proposed regulations to protect streams from over-withdrawal, but water companies and industry groups have fiercely opposed their passage. In those five years, the regulations have been whittled down to a skeleton of the original rules, as water companies have been given an extra decade to comply and all rules concerning groundwater were completely taken out. But the regulations shave yet to make it out of the state Legislature, as debates between environmentalists and industry representatives continue.

Part of the solution may be in changing the way water companies make their profits, said David Ratka, director of water resources for Connecticut Water Company. Water companies' profits increase if they sell more water to rate payers, he said, so encouraging water conservation would be bad for their bottom line. Connecticut Water Company came up with a potential solution -- it would charge customers a base rate and those that exceed the averages by too much would pay an extra fee.

"We are also exploring other options for promoting water conservation, including providing water companies with incentives to reduce the amount of unaccounted for water through leak detection and water audits and providing rebates and other incentives to customers to use water efficient products," said Elizabeth Gara, executive director of the Connecticut Water Works Association.

Also, perhaps the state should look at recycling some of its waste water to use for things like watering golf courses, said Belden. Bruzzi said she thinks the solution is to stop letting all the rainwater flow away. She proposed building more tanks and reservoirs to catch rainfall, and said instead of dumping snow into the rivers, it should be stored in those tanks to be used later.

"In one sense water is ultimate renewable, recyclable resource," Radka said. "Most people would agree that Connecticut is a very water rich state. The challenge is taking those same water resources where they need to be used and making sure there is enough there."

Contact Vinti Singh at vsingh@ctpost.com or 203-330-6285. Follow Vinti at Twitter.com/VintiSingh.