Written By Patricia Rouzer
AS THIS IS WRITTEN, MT. AIRY MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS AND THE STATE OF MARYLAND SEEM TO HAVE REACHED AN UNEASY TRUCE IN THE BATTLE OVER HOW MUCH WATER THE TOWN CAN USE TO MEET ITS FUTURE NEEDS?AND WHAT THE SOURCE OF THAT WATER WILL BE.?
Earlier, the state had ?halted?a?development approved by town officials?on the basis that its future inhabitants’ water needs?would unduly?stress area aquifers.
The town?contemplated?several solutions to its watery quandary: that it take water from the South Branch of the Patapsco River, tap the Potomac or use Gillis Falls as a potential water source.??
In September, town and state officials signed a consent order that will allow the town to use Patapsco’s South Branch to provide additional water?to?meet the town’s growing needs-provided that the town meet certain provisions.
In March, after a study indicated that the Potomac solution would be cheaper, Mt. Airy seemed to be leaning in that direction. But the state still had reservations about new development.
?
So?for now, the issue remains unresolved.
And the?state’s ability to put the kibosh on?development approved by?municipal and?county officials clearly continues to grate with?political stakeholders in?our rapidly developing county.?
Water is increasingly becoming a political hot potato, with the state declaring mandates and the local elected officials living with the results, said Dean L. Minnich, President of the Carroll County Board of Commissioners. And Minnich foresees no decrease in the growing number of spates involving who can take water from the ground–and, perhaps more importantly, how much they can take.
Everybody needs water and the state controls it. In Carroll County, municipal, county, and state officials are wrangling over the precious resource. The resulting tensions are changing the course of community development in Carroll county.
Since 2002 the state has dramatically curtailed the amount of water that can be extracted from local aquifers. That action has begun to restrict development in Carroll–even in areas surrounding incorporated towns–the exact location where the state says development is most desirable.
It seems inconceivable that the water supply in Carroll county is less than limitless. Look across Liberty Reservoir near Finksburg. “Water, water everywhere,” literally applies here.
Well, not quite.
It may come as a shock to many–particularly newcomers to Carroll County–that although the massive man-made lake lies primarily inside Carroll’s confines, its contents belongs to Baltimore City. And although the county has for years negotiated the purchase of some reservoir water–now some 2.6 million gallons a day–from Baltimore to supply portions of South Carroll, the city is under no obligation to share this embarrassment of liquid riches, despite the fact that much of it originates and is stored in Carroll County.
Near the middle of the last century a board of Carroll County commissioners sold Carroll’s rights to water in the reservoir to the state’s largest municipality with no apparent consideration for the future needs of county residents. It was a move Minnich gently described as “a classic lack of vision” by commissioners who were “living in the moment.”
That extraordinary blindness to the county’s potential water needs was a first step leading to today’s growing water dilemmas.
But nave and short-sighted though this sale of Carroll’s rights may have been, it was just the first in a chain of events that over time have wrested control over water resources in the county from local officials–a situation that clearly grates.
Today the politics governing water make classical ballet look like a simple line dance. Conflicts over who gets water and how much can cause open hostility and extraordinary machinations–with municipal, county, state and sometimes federal officials as well as developers participating in an often acrimonious bureaucratic polka.
“Times have certainly changed,” said Minnich, who describes the attitudes of earlier county and municipal officials as “pro-development, pro-growth–build it today and we’ll find water later.”
But “later” is here, things have changed, policies have altered, issues have heated up.
Finding water in the county is still relatively simple–dig a well, install a pump, and, if the well yields a gallon a minute and produces 500 gallons in a two-hour period once each day, you can build away–with one significant hitch: The right to draw water from a well–any well–is tightly controlled by the State of Maryland’s Department of the Environment.
And following the drought of 2002, MDE cut by half the amount of water it allows to be drawn from aquifers in the county. So no matter how prolific the aquifer in a proposed development may be, if the population will need more water than MDE allows, the development is a no-go.
The state’s action to restrict post-drought water permits brought into sharp focus a broader definition of “adequate facilities” required to gain permits for new developments beyond the traditional requirements for sufficient schools, police and fire protection and roads. Once taken for granted, water is now integral to “adequate facility” considerations–and one that has served to curtail or postpone development in parts of the county.
“In the State of Maryland the law is that you can appropriate a reasonable amount of water for your use if it does not damage the aquifer, your neighbor or the water supply,” said Thomas S. Devilbiss, Chief of the county’s Bureau of Resource Management and a hydrologist. “But who determines that? The state. Those are political and administrative decisionsÉand the criteria are not as cut and dried as they used to be.”
County municipalities have been particularly hard hit by the state’s action to restrict the amount of water that can be pumped from the aquifers around the county, said Minnich. So-called Smart Growth–also promoted by the state–calls for both residential and industrial development to be concentrated around county municipalities.
Carroll’s incorporated municipalities utilize city wells and, in the case of Westminster, additional surface water from a reservoir. The municipalities have drawn their master development plans to reflect Smart Growth principles. They often annex land adjacent to their boundaries slated for development–providing city services in exchange for the boost to the tax base.
But under its complicated water allocation formula, the state may not allow annexed property to draw enough additional water to support the development–in other words, the state does not deem the facilities adequate. Nor, said Minnich, do the current state water allocations support high density redevelopment within existing municipal boundaries.
Devilbiss shares Minnich’s concern over the obvious conflict between Smart Growth and the state water allocation.
“In most cases, “he said, “the state’s water allocation won’t support denser development and Smart Growth calls for development to be concentrated. Acre for acre, the water that the towns is allowed to extract cannot support the density encouraged by Smart Growth, based on policies that are in force now.”
In Carroll County, the state has halted developments not only in Mt. Airy but in Taneytown–and promises more state vs. county/town action.
The state’s action to halt the development adjacent to Mt. Airy is particularly ironic, given that plans for the Gillis Falls reservoir–a proposed facility that would provide 3.8 million gallons of water a day for the Mt. Airy area–have been on the county’s master plan for years. But the Gillis Falls project continues to lie fallow, despite the fact that over the years the county has purchased more than 1,100 acres–almost all the land needed for the reservoir site.
“Gillis Falls reservoir is still on the county’s master water plan, but we really haven’t revived the issue because we’ve been afraid the state and federal government would kill the project entirely. We are particularly concerned about whether we can get the necessary approvals from the feds,” said Minnich.
He explained that the county has carefully managed and environmentally protected the area for years and now fears that federal and state officials may not be willing to approve submerging this pristine land beneath millions of gallons of water.
“In essence, our careful management of the area may work against us,” he added.
Nonetheless, given the growing demand for additional water in the area, county officials may soon plot a strategy on how and when to begin activating the state and federal permit process required to create the reservoir.
Gillis Falls is not the only area in which the county has striven to preserve the environment. “We have worked to encourage preservation of agricultural land in the county, which contributes to maintaining the quality of our ground water,” Minnich said.
The county has particularly stringent water quality standards for its eastern portion. “Everything east of Parr’s Ridge, which runs from Manchester down through Westminster to Mt. Airy, feeds into Baltimore’s water supply, as well as the Chesapeake Bay, which has its own water quality issues,” he explained.
Despite grumbling by town and county officials over the state’s tightening of control over a resource once taken for granted, and some creative proposals by developers to provide water for their developments, everyone acknowledges that water is a finite resource that needs to be carefully managed.
And the county has formed a Council of Government composed of county and municipal officials who share their concerns and cooperate in developing strategies to cope with the state mandates.
“You aren’t going to stop growth, but if we work together we can develop solutions to problems that arise from growth–including water issues,” Minnich said.
County officials agree that on the whole the county’s water resources are adequate to its needs. In fact, the county commissioners approved a $1.5 million contract early in March for development of a back-up well along Raincliffe Road to supplement the water supply for the densely populated Sykesville-Eldersburg area, which can become particularly parched during the dry season.
Furthermore, County Health Department officials say water supplies are safe.
“Generally we are managing our resources well, but municipalities particularly have to be diligent in finding new water supplies,” said Devilbiss. The quality of the water distributed through municipal water systems is very good; these systems are run by certified personnel and the water from them is tested regularly for a variety of potential problems and pollutants.
Devilbiss said that the 2002 drought taught everyone some lessons about the state of the county’s water resources and their ability to recover from a massive water deficit.
“The drought took place over more than one year and we had never seen anything like that before,” he said, adding that the measures the county and municipalities took to restrict water usage proved to be helpful. In the wake of the hurricane that ended the drought, the reservoirs and aquifers recovered much more quickly than most people anticipated.
Devilbiss feels that state officials panicked in the face of the 2002 drought. “It was the worst one we had seen and no one knew how long it would take for water resources to recover,” he said, adding that “We were pleasantly surprised to see how quickly the aquifers, wells and reservoirs recovered when the rains began. The bottom line is that there were relatively few failed wells.”
Brian Flynn, Water Quality Supervisor for the Carroll County Health Department, said that the county’s ground water supply is generally quite safe. He notes, however, that there are occasional problems that result from nitrates leaching into wells from the soil and fertilizers.
Excessive nitrates are not a danger to adults, but can be harmful to babies under one year old. Water with high nitrate levels interferes with very young children’s ability to transport oxygen through their systems. Water with excessive nitrate levels can easily be made safe by the installation of a reverse osmosis water filter, which is in common use.
Flynn said that about 60 percent of county homes get their water from wells; the remaining 40 percent get water from municipal water sources, which are constantly tested for water quality and a variety of contaminants including excessive nitrate levels.
“The only way to know if you have a nitrate problem is to have your water tested,” Flynn said, adding that most homeowners know whether they have excessive nitrates in their water because lending institutions routinely require a water test as a condition of mortgages for homes supplied by private wells.
He added that for those rare homeowners who do not finance their homes through banks, he would highly recommend that they have their wells tested. As a rule nitrate levels in water tend to rise during drought periods, he said, although it is difficult to generalize about what conditions contribute to the problem.
However, it is true that the deeper the well, the less likely it is to have nitrate or other contaminants. “Hand dug and shallow wells are particularly prone to high levels of nitrates,” he said.
Heavy metals, pesticides and other potential pollutants are generally not problems for water sources in the county. “Today’s pesticides quickly bio-degrade. They don’t stay in the soil and pose health problems to people on well water,” he said. Heavy metals are only a concern in isolated areas of the county–primarily where there were small, private landfills that were not adequately managed.
Despite the problems raised by water–both quality and quantity–county officials agree that it is a critical resource that must be carefully protected and managed.
But, said Minnich, the issues surrounding water allocation and quality have become highly politicized. “When things become political, things become complicated.”
