Adventures in Water System Consolidation
Last week, I gave a talk at the Evergreen Rural Water of Washington (ERWoW) Fall Conference in Yakima, Washington, on water system consolidation. I spent some time on the nuts and bolts, but more on the community issues that so often derail these efforts. While this post is nominally about drinking water, one of my special interests, there are broader lessons here. It’s also about the challenges of spurring community action to protect and enhance a common pool resource against a backdrop of rugged individualism and private property rights. I’ll illustrate with my own community’s journey.
Like shoveling the driveway while it’s still snowing
Water system consolidation is a merger, the combining of two or more community drinking water systems into one. It’s a particularly hot topic in Washington, because we have so many water systems, about thirty-six thousand the last time I checked. In my county, population about eight-eight thousand, we have over four hundred Group A community water systems serving at least fifteen households, seven hundred and fifty Group B systems serving three to fifteen households, and about six thousand two-party or single household wells. Seventy-two percent of the county population is served by one of these groundwater systems, meaning that we have a well for every seven people on groundwater!
The county is adding several hundred more wells each year as people move to our rural zones in search of a little house on the prairie or a cabin in the woods, each with its own well and septic system. Our zoning and water rights laws make it all too easy to do that. Consolidating water systems feels at times like shoveling the driveway while it’s still snowing, or, for those who can relate, like cleaning the house while there’s still a teenager at home.
Our aquifer layers are ice-age glacial deposits, common across the northern tier of US states and in many places around the world. Our groundwater naturally contains iron, manganese, and arsenic, with latter in particular reaching levels posing a risk to health. Although we’re spared the pesticide contamination common in agricultural areas such as the Yakima Valley, chlorination. added to deal with the almost ubiquitous coliform bacteria, can react with other material in the water to generate disinfection byproducts, or DBPS. If any these contaminants are present in problematic amounts, the water must be treated to remove them, a major cost for a small system.
Man-made contamination with nitrate and other compounds from animal waste and septic effluent, with PFAS and some other compounds from firefighting and landfills, seawater intrusion into the aquifer, and seawater inundation of low-lying facilities are all hard to treat and require relocation of the well, another major expense.
Increasing contamination, regulation, development, and sea level rise are all making these problems more prevalent and harder to handle. The certified operators who run these systems are in short supply. Most are employed by service companies called Satellite Management Agencies (SMAs). Around the state, several of these SMAs have failed and others are on the brink. One of the two significant SMAs on the island has been bought by a parent company that is also the largest private owner of water systems here, putting a critical mass of systems in the hands of a distant corporate board, shareholders, and their banks.
“Remunicipalization” is a term coined in France that has gone global. From Paris to Philadelphia, Bozeman to Buenos Aires, cities, counties, and even countries are remunicipalizing their sewer and water systems — buying them back from corporate ownership. Better would be not to let water systems get into private hands in the first place.
Consolidation can reduce costs for the users and relieve pressure on the operators. It can also give water systems the scale and power to resist private ownership and keep water in public hands. If we can only get people to do it.
“You might want to move your wells”
In the early 1900s, a gold miner from Alaska bought a piece of land near the water on Useless Bay, Whidbey Island. He sold building lots along the sand spit, and the community of Sunlight Beach was born. Our gold miner hand dug a well on the spring line at the bottom of the upland to supply the homes. Over the years, duck hunting cabins became family cabins, then second homes, then first homes.
For historical reasons, the community has two water systems. One family, let’s call them the Montagues, was putting so much water on the back forty for the horses that the Capulets down the street weren’t getting any, so they started their own water system. Juliet was really into horses and started hanging around with Romeo. Those two are still living happily ever after, but the water systems remained estranged.
Both water systems have wells at the low end of a sloping field. In 2013, the owners of the field, descendants of the original gold miner, listed it for sale with a total of forty-eight building lots. Shortly after the sign went up, our State Office of Drinking Water engineer stopped by to inspect our facilities. He looked at the sign, looked at the wells, looked at me, and said “You might want to move your wells.”
What rolls downhill
We all know what rolls downhill. The concern with development upslope from our wells was nitrate and other contaminants from septic systems making its way into our rather shallow wells. According to the State Office of Drinking Water, our first line of defence was to develop a Wellhead Protection Program. Our responsibilities as a water system included a susceptibility assessment — we were pretty susceptible — and a thing called a Wellhead Protection Area (WHPA) Delineation, essentially figuring out where our water gets into the ground and how long it takes to reach our wells. For that we’d need a hydrogeologist.
A few weeks later, I went to a dance and met a hydrogeologist. This is Whidbey Island. Things like this happen all the time. He had one of his staff do a WHPA delineation, which showed that water — whether rain or septic effluent — falling or originating on the field would be in our wells within five years.
A Department of Health septic system calculator showed that forty-eight septic systems would push nitrate in the drinking water up to 16 mg/l (parts per million, or ppm). The state maximum contaminant limit is 10 mg/l. The World Health Organization prefers 2 mg/l. Nitrate can cause problems in vulnerable populations, for example blue baby syndrome.
As we’re in an area designated as a high susceptibility Critical Aquifer Recharge Area (CARA), the county would review an application to build on or subdivide the property. The county’s criteria are that the project should not increase nitrate by more than 2 mg/l or take it above 5 mg/l. However, there is no guarantee of the county’s decision.
In 2014, our water system made an offer for the property. The offer was rejected, and the listing was removed. All was quiet until 2021, when another proposed development triggered a crisis on the water system board.
Peace breaks out
Contentious meetings resulted in changes on the board. I stepped down as well. Shortly afterwards, the owners of the field announced an intention to develop the property themselves.
I had been president of Whidbey Island Water Systems Association for a number of years, and in that role, I had helped the other water system, who were members, with some planning documents, building a degree of trust with them. Sensing an opportunity, I reached out to our regional planner at the Office of Drinking Water to see if the Consolidation Feasibility Study Grant Program, which had been suspended, might be reactivated. It turned out that it would be, at a higher rate.
Following our board changes and the increase in trust, peace broke out between the water systems. The boards agreed to apply for the grant to tackle consolidation and probable relocation together. They successfully applied for the grant and hired an engineer to carry out the study. The consolidation team had two members from each water system: a scion of the Capulets, a real ex-NASA rocket scientist, a professional mediator, and me.
The Puget Sound flood of December 27th, 2022, hit many properties on the beach and brought salt water to within feet of our wells, strengthening support for their relocation.
We overcame our differences to guide the engineer through evaluating each water system separately and looking at moving them out of harm’s way individually or together.
Engineer’s Consolidation Feasibility Study report“The risks of contamination of the groundwater wells is sufficiently credible to recommend that affirmative actions be taken to protect the water supply in the future.”
“A prudent alternative will be to pursue construction of wells at a new location that is upslope of these potential contamination risks.”
The engineer’s report confirmed a need to relocate. The cost savings in consolidating were significant. The state Department of Health put a thumb on the scale on the side of consolidation by advising us that the zero down, low interest, possibly partially forgivable Drinking Water State Revolving Fund loans would not be available if the water systems decided to go it alone.
While the report addressed all the technical and many of the financial issues, open concerns remain around governance structures and water rates for a new system. The big issue, though, is the possibility of community resistance. This is where consolidation efforts so often fail.
It’s challenging to persuade retired people whose homes may be washed away by sea level rise and who may not even be alive in twenty years to invest in water system improvements for the next fifty. We have been conditioned to reject long-term cooperation to solve major problems, if it’s presented to us as a short-term threat to our independence. Our fixation on freedom has been weaponized against us.
Building trust, relationships, and community is the point
Overcoming that kind of resistance takes time in building trust, relationships, and community, as we can only move at the speed of consent. It’s tempting to feel that it’s not worth the effort. After all, we’re adding new water systems much faster than we’re consolidating. So, what’s the point? Why bother?
Because control of a common pool resource like drinking water should remain in public hands; because running a public water system is one of the few remaining areas of life where people from different political and social backgrounds must work together for the common good; and because building trust, relationships, and community is the point. So far, it seems to be working.
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