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Troubled waters
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Troubled waters
The Southern Hills Aquifer is a critical Capital Region asset, but overuse has it under threat from saltwater intrusion. BY DAVID JACOBS
EVERYBODY LIKES Baton Rouge water. It tastes good, it’s cheap, and, unlike in some Louisiana communities, the people who drink it generally don’t have to worry about boiling their water.
Not everyone realizes the Capital Region’s easily accessible groundwater also buoys the local industrial base. The Southern Hills Aquifer is a much more affordable source of water for industrial uses than the Mississippi River.
But decades of overuse has taken a toll on that asset. As more than 50 billion gallons a year are pumped out, salt water is creeping in. That’s a problem for residents and industrial users alike, says Alyssa Dausman, senior vice president and chief scientist with The Water Institute of the Gulf.
Everyone who knows anything about the aquifer agrees something should be done. The Water Institute is charged with helping to find science-based solutions amid what has become a very contentious process, with the aquifer’s most prominent user suing the regulatory commission it helped found.
THE RIGHT TO KNOW
The Louisiana Legislature recognized the need to regulate the aquifer in 1974 when it established the Groundwater Conservation Commission. Leo Bankston, the founding chairman, was an executive with the Baton Rouge Water Company.
The groundwater commission has long been accused of being too cozy with the aquifer’s industrial and commercial users.
“The Commission does not effectively regulate the withdrawal of water from the Southern Hills Aquifer so that saltwater encroachment can be reduced and the supply of fresh groundwater can be sustained,” the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Office stated in 2019.
The commission didn’t know how much water 2,225 of the 2,600 wells under its jurisdiction were capable of pumping, to name only one finding in the LLA’s report.
Users have been allowed to self-report how much water they’re taking, and are required to do so only once every quarter. Meanwhile, employees of regulated entities were allowed to serve on the commission, in apparent violation of state ethics laws.
Five members stepped down after the Louisiana Environmental Action Network filed an ethics complaint. Last year, Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed a bill that would have allowed employees of regulated companies to serve, though he indicated he might sign legislation that is more narrowly tailored, and a similar proposal was filed this year.
Brett Furr, an attorney with Taylor Porter, says other state boards have their own exceptions, though members have to recuse themselves from decisions that affect them directly. While users can suggest someone for the commission, finding someone with deep expertise that’s also willing and able to serve is harder than you might think, he says.
Furr is representing Baton Rouge Water in the private, forprofit company’s lawsuit against the commission, seeking to stop its effort to take users off the honor system and install meters on their wells.
“If you have nothing to hide,
ISTOCK
SCIENTIFIC METHOD: Alyssa Dausman, senior vice president and chief scientist with The Water Institute of the Gulf, is looking for science-based solutions to problems impacting the Southern Hills Aquifer.
transparency is a wonderful thing,” says Marylee Orr, LEAN’s director. “I think the people of our area who get all their water from this aquifer have the right to know.”
Dausman says quarterly reports don’t cut it when the flow model The Water Institute and LSU are developing could handle data on a daily and maybe even hourly basis.
Baton Rouge Water is “all about saving the aquifer,” Furr stresses. But the meters the commission plans to use won’t work on the company’s wells, President and CEO Patrick Kerr says.
Moreover, the contract with Sustainability Partners violates state bid law, Kerr argues. Citing an attorney general’s opinion about a different contract, the “design-build” deal with SP improperly combines different aspects of the public works project into a single contract, Kerr says in a letter to the commission.
Forcing well owners to allow for the permanent installation of metering equipment on their land amounts to “an unconstitutional taking of private property,” Kerr argues. He says there’s no reason to think anyone is fudging their numbers, and the commission could audit users for a fraction of the cost of installing meters.
In a contentious April 22 meeting, the commission voted 8-4 to more than triple what it charges for water from $20 to $65 per million gallons. The cost of the water itself is only a small fraction of a water bill, and for the average user the charge will be about 42 cents per month even after the price hike.
“I wish we were spending the money on something that would make a difference,” Kerr says in an interview.
The lawsuit questions the emergency rule-making process the commission is using.
Beard says the contract with SP is worth up to $10.4 million and represents the lowest of three bids. While state government’s Division of Administration had issues with the original version of the contract, he says, the document was tweaked based on cooperative endeavor agreements the attorney general’s office has approved.
GATHERING THE SCIENCE
Beard says the ultimate goal is to “preserve and protect this aquifer for drinking, bathing and cooking” and wean industry off the aquifer as much as is practicable.
But it costs more to use the river, and new expenses could make the local industrial sector less competitive, Daniel says.
Building a Mississippi River water clarifying plant through a public-private partnership is one possible solution, though it wouldn’t be cheap. But it also could be costly for industry if salt water reaches their wells, Dausman says, noting that the commission has the authority to issues bonds. Tighter regulation of certain sands, repurposing treated wastewater for irrigation, and a public campaign to encourage water conservation all could be in the solution mix.
In the meantime, industry already has decreased its dependence on the aquifer. ExxonMobil has spent $12.9 million since 2006 on new equipment and technology to reduce withdrawals from the Baton Rouge primary drinking water aquifers and now operates 70% of its refinery and chemical plant cooling towers on river water, the company says.
While the saltwater intrusion problem is serious, Dausman says, the worst-case scenario is far from imminent. While we don’t know for sure how much time we have to fix the problem, we know there’s still time.
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