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Water Restrictions on Georgia Coastline May Ease

Posted on: Thursday, 4 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

Aug. 4--A seven-year, $17 million government study has confirmed that pumping millions of gallons of fresh water out of wells is slowly allowing salt water to contaminate the best source of drinking water for the Georgia coast.

But the study, led by the U.S. Geological Survey, also shows it will take at least a century before saltwater leakage into the underground fresh water source reaches Georgia wells.

Based on the findings, Gov. Sonny Perdue on Wednesday announced plans to ease pumping restrictions that have been in place since 1997 in a 24-county coastal region.

In a written statement, Perdue said, "This is positive news for the citizens of Georgia and for the region's capacity to create jobs and support economic development. The scientific findings of this study indicate that continuing the current moratorium is unnecessary and additional water resources can be made available to the coastal region."

Rapidly developing communities in and around Brunswick and Savannah have been held to their 1997 well-water usage. The entire 24-county area has been able to tap into only an additional 36 million gallons a day, about the amount of water available to the city of Gainesville in Hall County.

Perdue's optimism was tempered in the same news release with a caution that the study also shows the "need to be prudent and conservative with groundwater resources."

The Brunswick and Savannah areas, where industries and growing populations have aggressively pumped water from the Upper Floridan aquifer that spreads below coastal Georgia and South Carolina, are likely to have some type of continued restrictions, said state Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch. The pumping changes pressure in the aquifer, allowing salt water to infiltrate. EPD recommends finding other sources of water, including recycled wastewater, to water golf courses, lawns and gardens.

EPD is explaining the results of the study, called the Coastal Georgia Sound Science Initiative, this week and next in a series of public meetings. It was paid for by USGS, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and four Georgia paper mills that use millions of gallons of Upper Floridan water a year.

Despite the study's estimate about the slow progress of saltwater intrusion, a South Carolina scientist on the technical advisory committee has a different take on the research. Camille Ransom III, a South Carolina Department of Health & Environmental Control senior scientist, said he has found a leak in the aquifer offshore, not far from Tybee Island. His findings have not been used in the Georgia study's 100-year projections.

"We don't know what the implication is at this point in terms of how soon coastal areas will be impacted," Ransom said. "We know we have a problem out there that's a little closer to home than we previously thought."

Bob Scanlon, environmental affairs officer for the city of Savannah, said Ransom's research raises questions.

"The saltwater wedge has moved further inland already," Scanlon said. "It's being blown off as being not significant and I think it might be."

The Floridan aquifer is a layering of underground reservoirs of freshwater and salt water that extends over 100,000 square miles beneath South Georgia, Florida, and parts of Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina. The top layer of the system, called the Upper Floridan, provides 85 percent of the industrial, agricultural and drinking water on the Georgia coast.

Scientists have known salt water is contaminating the Upper Floridan's freshwater supplies around Hilton Head Island in South Carolina since at least the 1960s, but this is the first time the extent and speed of the spreading contamination have been studied. The study delineates two previously unknown plumes of salt water in the marshes near Bluffton, S.C., under two golf course communities.

In addition, it proves that the salt water leaking into the Brunswick wells is a different problem. The source of that contamination is a salty layer of water 2,000 feet below ground that is moving up into the freshwater aquifer. According to the study, that problem appears to be contained and wells just outside the small area are unaffected.

PUBLIC MEETINGS: The state Environmental Protection Division is hosting a series of public meetings to discuss the Sound Science Initiative. Using monitoring wells and mathematical models, the seven-year study looked at the extent and cause of saltwater contamination to a system of underground, fresh water sources that supplies drinking water to more than half a million people. The dates and locations of the meetings, which are scheduled from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., are:

--Today at Camden County Health Department, 600 N. Charles Gillman Jr. Ave., Kingsland;

--Monday at the Bulloch Center for Agriculture, 151 Langston Chapel Road, Statesboro;

--Tuesday at Mighty Eighty Air Force Museum, 175 Bourne Ave., Pooler;

--Aug. 11 at Coastal Georgia Community College, 3700 Altama Ave., Brunswick.

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Source: The Atlanta Journal and Constitution

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