The Connector - Fall 2008 - (Page 19)

RWAU Fall 2008 Love Your Neighbor Erin Borger, RWAU Source Water Technician U tah reached 2.7 million people in 2008. With population around the state increasing, neighboring communities have a growing affect on one another’s source waters. So often, source protection zones are outside of a city, town or county’s jurisdiction. Sometimes they span through several districts and overlap one another. Perhaps your water system falls under the protection of a local ordinance or land agreement, or maybe there is no regulatory management plan that protects your water or your neighbor from contaminating it. Doesn’t it make sense to plan ahead rather than be cornered into a situation dealing with the health and finance of the community? Being aware of your surroundings is quintessential in protecting the future of your drinking water. Proactive planning with neighboring communities starts with communication. Take a look at your source protection plan’s delineation. Even if it doesn’t stretch into another’s jurisdiction, you are probably affecting who is down gradient of your system or being affected by who is up gradient. Contact the neighboring systems or public works departments, and if you don’t know them, get to know them! Compare Emergency Response Plans, and offer any practical support information. Discuss sample results to see if detects, such as inorganic contaminants, are a localized problem or a regional one. Comparing sampling results offer many clues to the health of your water source. Ideally, meetings such as these could lead to agreements such as an ordinance or bylaw. Many people think of “Source Protection Ordinance” and immediately think “Development Restriction.” This is NOT the case. There are many options in drafting a source protection ordinance. Depending on the desires of the authors, they can be strict, conditional, or lenient on development. The concept is to create something that mandates consideration of source protection when development planning arises. Let’s take a hypothetical example… Erin Town has a source protection zone that reaches into the next town over, Borger City. Because Borger City is perched a little higher than Erin Town and is primarily built on unconsolidated valley fill, Borger City’s agricultural, residential, commercial and industrial activity is percolating into the groundwater and surface waters of Erin Town. Let’s say Borger City builds an explosives plant in Zone 3 (the 3-year ground water travel time zone). Eventually, Erin Town begins detecting contaminants such as nitrate in their drinking water samples and is forced to treat and find new water. This scenario could have been prevented by an agreement that called for consideration in planning before development took place. An explosives plant may not have been prohibited but could have been built with design standards that contained its pollution. Best management practices could have been specified, and public education at the explosives plant could have prevented a contaminated groundwater plume. Because of the dynamic geography of Utah, groundwater and surface water generally move quickly. The risk of desecrating our drinking water and environmental quality is very real. By simply planning ahead, your community can avoid costly disaster during these growing times. Meeting with neighboring water systems not only provides the opportunity to make commitments about future development, but also manage existing contamination sources. For information on managing potential contamination sources, visit the Utah Division of Drinking Water’s website, http:/ /www.drinkingwater.utah. gov and view the Source Protection section under Division Programs. 370489_jones.indd 1 19 The 2/27/08 9:10:13 Connector AM http://www.drinkingwater.utah.gov http://www.drinkingwater.utah.gov http://www.jonesanddemille.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The Connector - Fall 2008

The Connector - Fall 2008 Table of Contents President’s Message Executive Director’s Comments Letters From Readers Legislative Update Rural Water News Making an Impression Diana Waite Love Your Neighbor Erin Borger Sanitary Surveys – What to Expect: Part II Chuck Jeffs Water Wise Utah Mary Dickson Where in Utah? Index of Advertisers

The Connector - Fall 2008

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