Sunday, July 15, 2007
Virginians can water their lawns for free
Christian Trejbal
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From the RoundTable blog
I often drive down Water Street in Christiansburg. It's a convenient little shortcut that sneaks motorists between Depot and Franklin streets, bypassing the annoying traffic light at the intersection.
A steep, green slope rises on one side of the street, and Crab Creek burbles along the other. Tree branches shade the couple of hundred yards of pavement, wild day lilies bloom, and scattered mulleins poke their stalks skyward ready to release their prolific seeds.
The street is both scenic and serene, and it shaves a good 30 seconds off my commute.
Some days, though, strange things are afoot on Water Street. Occasionally I spot landscaping trucks pulled over near the creek with hoses in the water. Are they dumping dirty, chemically tainted waste into a public stream? Are they sucking up the public's water?
When I called, the owner of one of the trucks explained that his workers, like other landscaping companies', pump water out of the creek to use for watering annuals and as part of a spray-on mulch mix.
I asked if he had a permit.
He did not. "Over 16 years, we've never had anyone say anything to us," he said.
It sure seemed like the sort of thing that requires a permit. After all, landscapers are draining a public resource.
Turns out it does not.
According to Kip Foster, water permit manager with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, taking water from the state's public waterways is usually legal without a permit.
Virginia has two Ground Water Management Areas where the DEQ curtails siphoning, both near the coast, but the rest of the state is wide open.
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Anyone can wander down to Crab Creek or the New River, insert a hose and suck out up to 300,000 gallons per month without a permit. To put that in perspective, the pool at the Blacksburg Aquatic Center holds about 200,000 gallons.
"If you put a permanent structure in, then you have to get a permit," Foster explained.
With typical landscaping trucks holding anywhere from 100 to 1,500 gallons, they probably are not even coming close to the limit each month, but they could be taking tens of thousands of gallons each from the public free of charge.
And it is the public's water. The same rules that set the 300,000-gallon limit declare, "The right to reasonable control of all ground water resources within the commonwealth belongs to the public."
Tamim Younos, associate director of the Virginia Water Resources Research Center at Virginia Tech, says the one-size-fits-all regulations are old and do not serve the state well.
"There is a stream flow requirement they should maintain for each stream and river," he said. "If it goes below that, it could affect the aquifer."
In other words, 300,000 gallons a month from the New is nothing. More than 2 million gallons rush by every minute on the average day in Giles County.
Hit up Crab Creek at that rate, though, and problems could arise.
Younos observed that the people at DEQ are generally very talented, but regulations limit what they can do. Plus, with so many water sources in the state, enforcement is prohibitively difficult.
Nevertheless, such simplistic, easily exploited water rules do not serve Virginia well.
A typical Christiansburg homeowner pays the town when he waters his lawn. Starting this fall -- the rates are going up -- the first 4,000 gallons in a two-month cycle will cost $12. After that, each thousand gallons up to 100,000 gallons will cost $3.45. The rate on even more water will remain unchanged at $2.10 per thousand gallons.
So, if a family uses 10,000 gallons in two months, it will cost about $33.
If a landscaping company uses 50,000 gallons, it would cost $170. Unless, of course, the company goes down to the creek. Then, it's free.
Not to make this a class issue, but the people who hire landscapers typically are not struggling to get by. Why should the people who push their own lawn mowers pay to water their plants when the people who can afford landscapers not?
Perhaps more people just need to play the game. Given the state's lax regulations, Virginians could buy pumps and run hoses to local waterways. They could water their lawns and gardens without giving thought to conservation, environmental preservation or paying a bill.
Maybe if enough people start sucking aquifers dry, the state will wise up and adopt sensible rules to limit siphoning public water.
Trejbal is an editorial writer for The Roanoke Times based in the New River Valley bureau in Christiansburg.
