Water’s rising in the well in southern Suffolk that state officials use to keep an eye on one of eastern Virginia’s key sources supply of drinking water — the underground aquifer they’d worried people and businesses were drawing too heavily upon.
Heavy use of the Potomac aquifer, a thick wedge of water-filled sand that lies about 300 feet to more than 1,500 feet below Hampton Roads, has been making the ground sink and pressure in drinking water wells fall for a century.
The aquifer stretches from the shore west to Richmond and north to the Washington suburbs. Water levels are down 200 feet in parts where use is heaviest, such as around the paper and pulp mills Franklin and West Point.
That’s why the rising water in that Suffolk well, just to the east of Franklin, is such good news to Scott Kudlas, director of the state Office of Water Supply. Water levels in Franklin itself are declining more slowly than expected with the expansion of new business at the old International Paper mill just outside the city.
But sharp cuts in the permits the state issues for ground water withdrawals in the past few years have focused attention on the issue. Big users, like the WestRock mill in West Point, have looked hard at how they use water and found ways to reduce it. WestRock and James City County, where more than 21,000 homes depend on the county water utility’s wells, are looking at other sources of supply.
And worries that there might simply not be enough water in parts of the aquifer to meet mid-century demand have abated, Kudlas said.
Four years ago, state and local water officials were warning there was a potential that demand in James City and Charles City counties could exceed supply by 2040. In Ashland, Bowling Green and Caroline and Hanover counties, where the aquifer isn’t as thick, they warned that shortfall could come as soon as 2030.
In response, the latest renewals of groundwater permits imposed sharp cuts in what users are allowed to draw. Overall, they brought permitted use down from 168 million gallons a day to 127 million.
For the 14 biggest users — which include the Franklin and West Point mills, James City County, Smithfield, Colonial Williamsburg and Chesapeake — the state slashed permitted withdrawals from 145 million gallons a day to 69 million. They’re currently using about 61 million gallons daily, which accounts for about 70% of actual use.
WestRock’s use in 2018 was down nearly 14% from its five year average. Colonial Williamsburg’s withdrawal fell 7%, state water supply reports show. Just over the past year, James City County’s use dropped by nearly 6%.
The county has won a permit to draw up to 16.95 million gallons of brackish water a day from the Chickahominy River, which would be processed in a new $120 million-plus treatment plant. The aim is to provide an average of 8 million gallons a day, well above last year’s 5.4 million gallon daily draw from its wells. While the county’s groundwater permit allows it to draw more, that permit calls for an eventual reduction to 3.8 million gallons daily.
But the plant would be expensive, and matching the chemistry of its water with the rest of the county system could be complicated. So a longstanding option to buy water from Newport News Waterworks — an option that would cost several million dollars just to keep alive, in addition to the sums actually spent to buy water — remains on the table. So does the Hampton Roads Sanitation District’s plan to injected highly treated wastewater into the aquifer.
The sanitation district can treat wastewater to drinking water standards, and by injecting it into the aquifer somewhere in the county, but away from wells, hopes to maintain water levels and pressures in a way that would ensure supply. Since it takes about 180 years for groundwater to travel a mile, that treated water wouldn’t reach wells for a long time. Similar systems have been operating in California since 1962, and the Upper Occoquan Service Authority has been injecting treated wastewater into a Northern Virginia aquifer to maintain groundwater pressures since 1978.
Kudlas said city and county water utilities’ efforts to focus attention on conservation, including tracking down and fixing leaks in their own pipes and valves as well as reminding customers of the importance of saving water have had a big impact.
So, too, is the less obvious fact that as people replace aging appliances and plumbing fixtures, the products available now are designed to use less water, he said.
“I think things are looking better,” he added.
Dave Ress, 757-347-4535, dress@dailypress.com
