Beyond the Tap: Solutions

Today: An ambitious state-mandated study of the region’s water needs for the next several decades says regionalism will be the key to managing the area’s water resources.
Sunday: We live in an area where we seemingly have a wealth of water — lakes, rivers, reservoirs and groundwater. Yet, as the region’s thirst grows and our resources are affected by increased demand and weather fluctuations, there are questions in some localities about whether that wealth will remain.
Monday: Groundwater feeds the wells that supply drinking water to thousands of homes in Central Virginia not served by public utilities. In some areas, and especially since the 2002 drought, that water is becoming harder to find.

Mike Futrell likes to tell a fish story when he explains the infrastructure that serves the area’s public water needs:

Imagine a fish dropped in a water pipe. That fish could swim hundreds of miles just through the pipes under Lynchburg.

And in the future, as more infrastructure is put in place to quench the region’s growing thirst, that fish theoretically could swim from the town of Appomattox to the western fringes of Virginia.

“I think the average person hasn’t a clue as to how extensive and interconnected these networks are,” Futrell said. “I wouldn’t be surprised 50 years on, you could probably follow a water pipe to New York City.”

Futrell is the geographic information systems administrator for Draper Aden Associates, the engineering firm compiling Region 2000’s water supply management plan. His role has been gradually building a database and mapping system to visually show what kind of infrastructure already exists — a precursor to determining how to service needs in the decades to come.

As the General Assembly-mandated plan takes shape — with a working draft to be discussed during a public meeting Thursday — a key component will examine more interconnectivity and regional cooperation. A section of the plan includes every possible water source alternative along with costs and impacts.

“One of the things with this plan is you want to throw a whole range of alternatives on the table,” Draper Aden environmental program manager Mike Lawless said. “Some of these may not be economically or environmentally feasible today, but the idea is to get them out there.”

One future solution to managing the area’s water supply needs could include re-examining dormant interconnections, such as one between Campbell and Bedford counties, which once had a water purchase agreement, Lawson said.

Other proposed solutions include building new reservoirs, raising dams on existing reservoirs to increase capacity and even recycling sanitized wastewater for customers using non-potable water.

Over the long run, economic and political situations are fluidand reasonable solutions in 2015 may not be economically viable in 2040, Lawless said.

Water managers want to have as many backups as possible. If a primary water source runs dry or becomes polluted, there needs to be at least one backup system, Lynchburg utilities director Tim Mitchell said.

The city relies on the James River as that secondary backup, but a hope is that one day, a connection between Lynchburg and either Roanoke or Smith Mountain Lake could be opened in an emergency, Lawless said.

“It could be the James, Smith Mountain Lake, some well fields,” Lawless said. “But I think the flexibility to be able to pull from a number of sources is one of the benefits of this regional approach.”

WATER SUPPLY MANAGEMENT PLAN- Thursday’s meeting will include a series of presentations about the working draft of the Region 2000 water supply management plan. It will be held from 4-6 p.m. at the Lynchburg Public Library, 2315 Memorial Ave.
- A final draft will be released, perhaps by early fall, after each locality has an opportunity for review. Then a series of public hearings will be held for citizen comment, likely sometime this winter, said Region 2000 deputy director Bob White.

CLIMATE CHANGE A FACTOR
An emerging water supply issue that won’t be in the Region 2000 plan is climate change.
It’s a topic that the Department of Environmental Quality will need to start taking into account as more research points to potential problems with water supply management, said Mike Lawless, Draper Aden Associates environmental program manager.
“I think that’s one of the things of water supply that wasn’t really in the front of the minds of the General Assembly when they put the regulations together,” Lawless said. “But as DEQ puts this together, that’s a component that’s coming into play. We are all aware that it is something that needs to be taken into consideration.”
It’s predicted that precipitation will fall differently in the future, with shorter and more intense storms rather than long soaking rains that replenish groundwater, Lawless said. A challenge facing water managers will be finding ways to capture that runoff to use during dry periods.
Most climate change research focuses on forecasts for large regions or on a continental scale; details are still relatively vague for smaller regions, such as ours. 
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report in April that outlined projected effects on water quality and quantity.
In it, authors said they had “high confidence” that:
- Hydrological records that were once reliable predictors for water supply management and infrastructure may not hold up.
- Flooding and drought risks will increase in many areas because precipitation variability and intensity will change.
- Climate change will intensify other water quality stressors, such as development, population growth and urbanization.