Agenda - Council - 07/28/2015 - Laserfiche WebLink

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5 Key Water Supply Issues Introduction Our region is growing and our environment is changing. The region cannot take easy access to water for granted, and water supply planning should be done when there is time to develop workable solutions, not when a crisis threatens. Good planning now will keep our water supply safe and plentiful for generations to come. Regional planning will provide a comprehensive look at issues associated with cumulative impacts of individual cities decisions. This chapter discusses the water supply issues the region faces and how they vary across the region, including regulatory considerations, water use, conflicts and well interference, aquifer decline, surface water and ecosystem impacts, contamination, uncertainty in aquifer properties, reliability and funding. Regional mapping, monitoring networks, and modeling are used to characterize the issues discussed in this chapter. This information should be refined with more locally -specific information, if available, to better evaluate potential issues. The information is also summarized for each community in Appendix 1. Water issues change across the region and through time Water issues are different in different parts of the region, and they may vary over time. While water supplies - including a variety of aquifers and surface waters - are regionally abundant, they are not evenly distributed throughout the metropolitan area and may become limited over time due to hard -to - predict events like long term drought or contamination. In addition, the state of public water supply systems varies greatly across the region. Some communities are fully served by aging water supply systems while others have just begun to develop public water supplies. Rural areas have different water supply and source water protection issues than their urban counterparts. Our major rivers - the Minnesota, Mississippi, and St. Croix - transect the region, but most communities do not have direct access to these sources. The groundwater in the metropolitan area is not all connected - groundwater does not flow all the way from Anoka County to Dakota County and vice versa. Consequently, the amount of available groundwater is not uniform from community to community. Figure 18 illustrates how hydrogeologic conditions and community development combine to create a patchwork of different water supply conditions across the region. Each color represents a different combination of aquifers and groundwater recharge and discharge areas. Different shading illustrates different community development patterns, where darker indicates communities served by public water supply systems and lighter indicates communities mostly served by private wells. WATER SUPPLY MASTER PLAN- Draft June 2015