Rolling the Dice on Water

                                     Rolling the Dice on Water

By Albert B. Kelly

Sometimes I long for the good old days…whatever they are.  You remember- those days when we didn’t wrestle with stuff like global warming, climate change, rising sea levels, melting ice caps, killer droughts and super storms. Maybe we should have done some wrestling back then because we might be in a better place now.

It’s also hard these days because you’ve got politicians and some scientists all over the place on this stuff, with some denying that there’s even a possibility of global warming and others setting their hair on fire at the prospect of rising sea levels.

But somewhere between the flat earth crowd and setting your hair on fire lay the issues that matter, or at least should matter, to anyone who wants a decent quality of life now and for the future. One of those issues is water…for drinking, bathing, flushing, farming, industry, and everything else that’s impacted by water.

Maybe we just take its presence for granted because we can turn a faucet and it’s there in all its glory. So we don’t spend much time thinking about where it comes from or how it gets extracted and treated. Fortunately, the issue of our water is getting attention, but more of us at street level need to pay attention.

The issue of water- quantity and quality- has a history. In 1981, legislators enacted the “New Jersey Water Supply Management Act” which set out a few things, like the fact that water is a resource that belongs to all NJ residents and the state has a responsibility to manage it responsibly, which includes planning for future needs.

It’s a water master plan and like all master plans; it needs to be read from time to time and updated based on whatever happens to be the new normal. The last time anyone bothered to get into the tall grass with this water master plan was 1996.

Back then, the plan projected that by 2010, 8 of the states 23 watersheds would be at a deficit and according to those in the know; these included the Maurice River and Cape May Coastal watersheds.

Closer to home, Bridgeton draws its water from the Kirkwood-Cohansey and Piney Point aquifers- providing water to over 7,000 meters for residential, commercial, and industrial use.

A lot can happen to aquifers including contamination through man-made things, decay or, as in the case of the Cape May watershed, an invasion of salt water which means desalination, probably at great cost to taxpayers. Just as importantly, we can overuse these aquifers and suck them dry.

The bottom line is that we have to know where things stand today but we’re basically working off of 1996 numbers. Back then, they estimated that NJ would have 8.9 million people by 2040. Current estimates say we hit 8.8 million in 2010 on our way to 10.4 million around 2030. Go figure.

Fortunately, an updated and more current water supply master plan has been drafted. According to “Save H2O NJ”, a group that includes the American Littoral Society, Pinelands Preservation Alliance, New Jersey Highlands Coalition, and Association of New Jersey Environmental Commission, the draft plan looked at 150 smaller watersheds using analytics to get a handle on current and future demand.

Unfortunately, the state hasn’t released the draft for public review and comment in spite of a growing chorus demanding that it be released. Who knows what the holdup is- it shouldn’t be politics, I’m guessing Iowa and New Hampshire have their own water issues to deal with.

On the other hand, maybe the delay is about what comes next, the natural slide into debates about the environment and sustainability. From there, it could easily turn into a food fight about global warming, climate change, sea levels, melting ice, and droughts.

But here’s the thing- politics notwithstanding- do we really want to roll the dice with something as basic and foundational as our water supply? And it’s not just our water supply, but the water resource that our kids and grandkids will need.

Still, you know more than a few will turn this into a partisan mess. This should not be. On something as basic as water, we need to insist on a neutral space where the current report can be released and some thoughtful planning can happen because if we get this wrong, the tipping point may be closer than we know.