Water, Water... Anywhere?

The word is out. Professor Cal DeWitt has sleuthed some amazing and disturbing facts out of the recesses of our aquifers. At Tuesday night’s Planning Commission meeting, he explained the relationship he discovered between Fitchburg’s deep-aquifer, high-capacity Well #10 (located on Granite Circle) and the 125-year-old, upper-aquifer, cased artesian Well #8 (located at Nevin Springs Fish Hatchery). It had been assumed that both wells were drawing from separate aquifers based on their depth profiles (800 feet or more for Well #10 and 180 feet for Well #8), and one mile distance from each other. However, Professor DeWitt found a significant correlation between them that changes the original assumptions.

Nevin Springs was producing 400 gallons of water per minute (gpm) for a number of years until late 2001 when it started dropping. It has since continued at a lower rate of 300-350 gpm. A mile away, Well #10 started pumping in 2001 and within a year was pumping around 600k gallons per day.

As shown in one of his graphs, a pattern appears when comparing the flow volume drawn by the new, municipal well and the decreased flow, about 12 months later, from the artesian well.

The bottom line? About 10% of the pumpage of Well #10 is equal to the losses at Well #8 that show up after a 12-month lag. So, there is a connection between these wells in the upper and lower aquifers and water is traveling at the rate of 14.5 feet per day from Nevin Springs in the direction of the Granite Circle well.

The fact that Professor DeWitt was able to find this relationship buried in the data from many area wells is surprising enough but I received another shock when he told us that we don’t really know how this happens. It appears that, at least sometimes, the upper and lower aquifers are indeed connected even though they separated by an aquitard (made of layers of sedimentary rock) which limits vertical waterflow except in cracks. To complicate matters, the horizontal flow between these two wells is 10s of thousands of times greater than the vertical rate of water flow through the aquitard, perhaps because of long horizontal pipes that formed over the years.

What does this mean? Professor DeWitt urges us to consider the entire groundwater hydrology system before we do something that would stop the flow of water to important springs and lakes in the area. For example, if we turn off Deep Spring and other groundwater resources that refresh Lake Waubesa, the entire southern boot (most of the lake) would die (eutrophy). And distance does indeed make a difference when dealing with solutions. The farther away we stay from precious water resources, the better chance we have to protect them. So, locating any new well in the vicinity of the NE Neighborhood is more of a threat to Lake Waubesa and the natural resources because of its impact on groundwater flow to the watershed.

Although this bombshell was dropped during the agenda item for the NE Neighborhood and Stormwater Plans, it also must be considered for all well drilling activity and increased water use (ie. development) in Fitchburg and beyond. If we fail to consider how new high-capacity wells will draw groundwater from the surrounding area, other springs or wells (including private wells) could dry up. This has happened with many of the famed springs of Waukesha and the Little Plover River in Stevens Point, among others.

[Side Track: According to Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (link here), one entrepreneur wanted to pipe water from a Waukesha spring on his property all the way to Chicago to supply the 1893 World’s Fair. But, Waukesha residents didn’t want the water to leave the city and they showed up with guns, knives and pitchforks to stop the pipeline workers, returning at 2 am with a cannon (!) to drive away them away again. For the rest of the story, see the Lake Lore article on page 4 of the Alliance for the Great Lakes newsletter here.]

Fast forward to Fitchburg 2007.

Professor DeWitt explained the concept and vital need for Groundwater and Watershed Budgets which he likened to other budgets. Simply put, we need to know how much we are depositing (infiltration) into each aquifer and withdrawing (wells and springs) from each aquifer to be sure that we don’t overdraw our account and live beyond our means. To protect against this, he suggests that the City of Fitchburg recommend to Dane County and CARPC (Capital Area Regional Planning Commission) that:

1. they place high priority on developing a policy for a Groundwater Budget for the region; and
2. they work with Fitchburg on procedures for monitoring and evaluating diminished well and spring flow to the city and region.

I am happy to report that, after the presentation, applause (normally against the rules at these meetings) was allowed to acknowledge Professor DeWitt’s efforts, and the Planning Commissioners wisely responded to these sobering data by asking for more information before making a decision about the NE Neighborhood. I’m not sure if they actually ordered a Groundwater Budget but I think that prospect is at least on the radar if not the table.

(NOTE: FACTv recorded the entire meeting including Professor DeWitt's presentation. So, you can contact them to have a DVD made of all or part of the meeting or to rebroadcast it during their Thursday morning request slot. If that doesn't work for you, drop me an email at fitchburgvoices@gmail.com to borrow my copy.)

The Trouble With Happiness

I’m finishing up the last chapters of “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert (link here), an entertaining and thought-provoking book about how the mind works. What does the mystery of the mind have to do with Fitchburg? Plenty!

Gilbert explains that based on various studies “Starting points matter because we often end up close to where we started.” So, it was inevitable that after a maximum growth rate for Fitchburg of 75 acres per year was voted in, it would be seen as a target instead of a maximum. (Those of you who follow Council and Commission meetings may remember that I predicted this danger at the time. But admittedly, it was intuition not research that led me to that conclusion.) Every time I’ve heard it mentioned since then, the statement includes a comparison such as “we have enough land already identified in the Urban Service Area to last for X years at 75 acres per year.”

However, back on Feb. 20th, before this “maximum” was established, a presentation to the Planning Commission by city staff included the statement that, as of 2005, we had about 1,000 acres left to develop within the current Urban Service Area (USA) so we only need to add 250 acres from outside the USA to take us from 2005 to 2030. The assumption was based on a growth rate of, not 75, but 50 acres per year.

I don’t want to stray too far, but the February presentation also included an example of what would happen if we continue to develop at 100 acres per year which is close to the 104 acre average since 1990. The result when factoring in a “50% flexibility factor” is that by 2060, we’d use up roughly 10,000 of the remaining 11,000 acres that could be developed outside of the current Urban Service Area. If you aren’t alarmed, reread the last sentence! Let me put it another way. Under this scenario, all but a small portion of our entire 36 square mile city that isn’t preserved as a park or someone’s lawn could be covered with roads and roofs by 2060.

What if we want to protect more farmland and open space and “only” pave over 50 acres per year… or even 25 acres? Those amounts are still less than the maximum established (so they meet that criteria) but they are no longer even being considered as options at any of the meetings I’ve attended (and I haven’t missed many in the last six months). Was silencing all other discussions about Fitchburg’s rate of growth the intent of the 75 acre per year maximum or was it one of those unintended consequences?

This brings me back to the happiness problem. It turns out that it is quite difficult for us to predict what will make us happy in the future partly because, as Gilbert explains, “we use our present feelings as a starting point” and we “expect our future to feel a bit more like our present than it actually will.” So, when Steve or Hans or Phyllis describe a future with fewer car trips, we can’t imagine it since that’s not what most of us are currently experiencing.

Remember being warned that you should not grocery shop when you are hungry because you’ll buy things you don’t need? Similarly, we shouldn’t shop for Fitchburg’s Future with gasoline in our veins. It’s going to sway our judgment.

Instead, what if we used the gas shortages of the 1970s as our starting point when talking about the future of Fitchburg? (You may need to ask your parents or the all powerful Google about this if you are under 50.) How would being able to walk or bike to work, or the convenience of taking a commuter train or an express bus, compare with being stalled in traffic jams and waiting in line for hours every time you had to buy gas at ever increasing prices?

I contend that if you walked up to someone, who anticipated an hour or more wait to buy gas (like the picture below), and offered them an instant ticket on the Fitchburg Express (and a convenient way to get to the terminal), you could probably convert an unhappy driver into a happy passenger.

Line at gas station on Sept. 15, 1979 (from Wikipedia)

Another limitation of our brain, that affects our happiness, is described by Gilbert this way: It is “so much easier for me to remember the past than to generate new possibilities. I will tend to compare the present with the past even when I ought to be comparing it with the possible.” In this case, the past is not the 1970s but the more recent past. We have a hard time generating new possibilities going forward. This takes vision and requires a willingness to consciously remove some things from the table to make room for new ideas. By design, most of us are not gifted in this area. (More about this later.)

Our lack of vision also means that we often “fail to realize that our future selves won’t see the world the way we see it now.” I believe our inability to recognize that our future selves will be living in a different world, (with a different set of facts, and therefore a different set of values and beliefs), hinders our ability to make the changes necessary to create a better future.

It turns out that we are programmed to pay attention to the things we want to hear, to remember details that support our views, and to accept a lower standard of proof for facts with which we agree. While that seems like a rather immature way to act, it’s all in the name of happiness. In Chapter 8 - Paradise Glossed, Gilbert explains that people have a “Psychological Immune System that defends the mind against unhappiness in much the same way that the physical immune system defends the body against illness… A healthy psychological immune system strikes a balance that allows us to feel good enough to cope with our situations but bad enough to do something about it.”

Yes, there is trouble with happiness. We need to happily cope with today’s problems. But, let’s not let things get bad before we do something about them, because today’s solutions (including inaction) could create irreversible problems in the future. And that’s a place that we (or someone we love) must live.

Eggleston's Review of "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"

From Rich Eggleston (emphasis added by Terry):

I recently picked up Barbara Kingsolver's book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life," a back-to-our-roots look at industry-driven, petroleum and other chemical based agriculure, that shakes its head at how far America has been led down a path chosen by the agribusiness community, not a bunch of people you'd want your kids associating with.

The book explores how Americans in particular have chosen Big Macs over shepherd's pie, and in the course of doing so we've brought down on ourselves all kinds of health problems. If you want to know what health problems, read the book. They're too depressing to repeat here.

By focusing on a family's year-long adventure away from America's bad food habits, the book somehow avoids being overly judgmental and preachy. It's evangelical, true, but the evangelizing is below the surface of a narrative that flows from asparagus to zucchini, a time for every vegetable under heaven.

Being by nature a political beast who is losing my patience with a lot of today's policies that seem to cater to Wall Street instead of Elm Street, I tend to look for the villains lurking behind the gingham curtains in the kitchen.

And I find them aplenty: the folks who not only took the bread out of bread (replacing it with air), but the taste out of tomatoes and the nutrition out of a host of factory-farmed plants and animals. Kingsolver calls the chain of events "The Case of the Murdered Flavor."

When our friends in agribusiness were through murdering flavor and neutering nutrition, they put the result in microwaveable containers and added enough chemicals to give any particular food a shelf life approximating the half life of radium.

This enabled them to put farmers on an economic treadmill, running as fast as they can to stay in place so they can barely afford higher pesticide and chemical fertilizer costs. Only 19 cents of every food dollar ends up in the farmer's pocket, according to an aside on page 208 of the book.

No wonder farmers are hurting. The government responds by directing nearly three-quarters of farm subsidies to corn and soybean producers, who produce animal food, not people food, the book notes. The subsidies total some $80 billion a year when you factor in transportation, according to Kingsolver's husband, Steven L. Hopp, who provided some of the grim statistics.

Ain't this a great country? And I still have two pages of the notes I wrote on the book to sift through. I'm somewhat proud to have written this junior diatribe (The Fitchburg Star will get the fullblown version) after having eaten a true locavore's supper: lamb chops purchased at the farmer's market in Phillips yesterday and corn from a little ways down Highway 13. The green beans came from Michigan, though. All brought to Dane County at the end of a glorious week in the northwoods.

I somehow escaped tomatoes from our garden in Fitchburg, but I'm sure I'll have to pay for my sin of omission.

Rich Eggleston