Over pumping groundwater in the Coastal Plain: One states perspective
Craig Nicol
From Capacity Use to Coal Ash
Nat Wilson

FlintWaterStudy is a an independent research team from Virginia Tech (VT) volunteering our time, resources and expertise to help resolve scientific uncertainties associated with drinking water issues being reported in the City of Flint, MI. We got involved in August 2015, after we analyzed and found hazardous waste levels of lead coming out of the taps of Ms. LeeAnne Walters (a former resident of Flint). The people in Flint kept trying to get their elected officials to understand that the water they were told was safe to drink- to give to their children- was not safe. But the state told everyone who was worried about lead in water to “relax” and generally dismissed the concerns of the public. Observing this dangerous attitude, we knew that if we got involved, we could supply some funding, analytical support, and sound science to help the people in Flint determine if their water was safe.

What follows is the story of the people of Flint, who turned citizen scientists and aided us in our investigation. This is a story of how a professor and a group of 20 somethings in Blacksburg VA became one of the only groups that the City trusted after their trust was broken by government agencies. This is a story of despair, of scientific misconduct, of an incident that endangered public health, but it is also a story of hope, of heroes who worked tirelessly till this issue gained prominence.

Groundwater, a basic life-sustaining and economic resource, must be managed locally through best practices of states and local governments and their residents and businesses recognizing the range of domestic, municipal, industrial, ecological, and agricultural uses it supports for their communities’ continued wellbeing.

Groundwater is the world’s most extracted raw material. A sustainable groundwater resource must provide for a range of needs including agricultural irrigation and livestock watering, domestic and industrial water supply, streamflow maintenance, support for ecosystems of shallow aquifers, streams and coastal waters. Groundwater in shallow aquifers or shallow zones of aquifers is vulnerable to contamination and groundwater mining from human activities.

Groundwater sustainability is defined as the development and use of groundwater resources in a manner that can be maintained for an indefinite time without causing unacceptable environmental, economic, or social consequences.

To mitigate unacceptable consequences, practices for maintaining sustainable groundwaters should incorporate reliance on natural processes; protection and remediation of groundwater sources; management of groundwater use within available capacity; abilities to recover in timely ways to unforeseen disruptions; regular re-assessment of alternative, life-cycle, and long-term costs; effects and resource management adjustments. Observations for sustainable groundwater will be offered and feedback from conferees sought.

One of the challenges facing groundwater hydrologists is to communicate the highly variable temporal characteristics of groundwater systems and their responses to human and natural stresses.  Just as hydraulic conductivity spans many orders of magnitude, temporal scales range from real-time to many millennia. This presentation presents a travelogue through different time scales of interest to hydrogeologists from diurnal variations in groundwater responses, annual responses to droughts, long-term climate change, decadal-to-millennial scale responses to pumping, residual effects of glacial periods, and forecasts for nuclear waste disposal. These time scales are related back to groundwater governance.