Read more: Northwest Herald article HERE and TribLocal HERE. November, 2009

Water shortages, present and future 

Recently, a number of editorials and articles have appeared in the local press regarding our water supply. Perhaps this is due to the unique conjunction of the severe drought this summer and the recent unveiling of the McHenry County Groundwater Resources Management Plan that predicts a long-term shortage of water in southeastern McHenry County. Since there is some unusual attention presently focused on water supply (a resource that is generally taken for granted), we should use this moment in time to its best advantage.

The voluminous Groundwater Resources study forecasts that the county’s population in 2000 of about 260,000 will likely rise to 340,000 by 2020, and to nearly 450,000 by 2030. Accompanying this will be an increase in total water demand from about 35 million gallons per day (mgd) in 2000, to about 50 mgd in 2020, and to more than 60 mgd in 2030. The report indicates that all of the water will likely need to come from groundwater extraction, because at present, there are no practical alternatives in sight. The growth in population and corresponding increase in water use is expected to be concentrated mainly in southeastern McHenry County. In at least 2 townships, Algonquin and Grafton, groundwater extraction will exceed the sustainable yield of all of the underlying aquifers before 2020 and will do so by a wide margin by 2030. Beyond 2030, if municipalities are fully built out in accordance with existing comprehensive plans, half of the county’s townships will need to extract more groundwater than the sustainable yield of the aquifers beneath them. Since the forecasted population increase is expected to occur mainly from new land development in areas served by municipal water supply and sewers, most of the groundwater extracted will be exported from the county to rivers via discharge from sewage treatment plants.

The extent and magnitude of forecasted groundwater extraction beyond the sustainable aquifer yield could have a devastating effect on the area’s lakes, streams, and wetlands as water tables are lowered. This phenomenon has occurred in other developing areas that rely solely on groundwater. The Defenders expressed this concern early in the preparation of the County Groundwater plan, and recent presentations of the plan have contained more pronounced warnings regarding the adverse environmental consequences of excess water extraction.

In the Plan, many measures are discussed as a means to address the potential shortage including a county wide water conservation program; protection of (privately owned) recharge areas; public acquisition and preservation of open space and natural recharge areas; and creation of a county-wide Water Authority. The Water Authority would oversee, among other things, determination of shallow aquifer safe yields, permitting of new wells, development of remote well fields, and investigation of surface water supplies such as the Fox and Rock rivers.

The only mention in the Plan of a specific means to provide funding for implementation of the above measures is one currently provided to Water Authorities by Illinois statute. It consists of “a general tax on all taxable property within the authority’s corporate limits.” In my personal opinion, a general tax misplaces the responsibility for mitigating a problem that will be brought about solely by future land development. The principle that land development should pay its own way has been well established in a number of areas. For example, residential development’s impact on schools has resulted in the widely accepted requirement that impact fees be paid to local school districts to help offset the cost of building schools for additional students. Similar impact fees are assessed to create funding for additional parks, roads, and other infrastructure resources that are required to accommodate development. It is entirely consistent that a countywide system should be devised to levy a groundwater depletion-based impact fee on new development in order to fund the measures necessary to responsibly manage demands for increased groundwater withdrawals caused exclusively by land development.

I hope that Defenders members will support implementation of many of the recommendations in the Groundwater Resources Management Plan, and resist the notion of a general tax to fund them. I hope that there will be support for a groundwater depletion-based impact fee imposed on future land development. Most importantly, I hope that the future water shortage issue will give local officials reason to pause and consider the carrying capacity of our land before making decisions on new land development proposals.

Ed Ellinghausen is on the Defenders Board of Directors and actively participates in our Water Resources Committee. He is a Licensed Professional Engineer with a degree in civil engineering. Early in his career he was a field engineer investigating the adequacy and reliability of municipal water systems throughout the U.S . Recently semi-retired, he has been doing research on the groundwater system that sustains Boone Creek near his home.