Issues with the MPPDC's Water Management Plan ***UPDATED***

March 27, 2012

To Our Board of Supervisors:

Ten years ago, the Middle Peninsula Water Supply Management Plan was 35 pages. The 2011 plan is 333 that are more confusing than informative. The report uses 1998 DEQ material instead of 2006, and uses 2007 census estimates instead of actual 2010 census numbers in calculating water usage in the Middle Peninsula.

Some report mistakes have no easy explanation. An example is a statement that Mathews has no sites listed in the National Historic Register (page 48). That's wrong: we have thirteen. So why didn't our Mathews representatives on the MPPDC object to it?  Possibly because it was buried under so many other disconnected facts and figures, and most don't apply to Mathews.

Unnecessary technical data from many sources is used. Tables from the 1990's give details on how water moves horizontally and vertically through different aquifers and the layers between them, but more than 2/3's of samples are from Langley and outside the crater in Newport News. They use a 1977 report of aquifer characteristics and well yields, but over the decades since then, the impact crater was discovered and completely changed our understanding of local aquifer structure.

The report does note the existence of the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater, but fails to mention only a handful of towns world-wide are located completely within a crater the way our entire County is.

Where the Potomac Aquifer is a major water source elsewhere, it's not for Mathews, because here, it's one massive layer with its top at a depth of about 750 to 1500 ft below the surface as it slopes eastward to the Bay. (USGS Professional Paper  1731). Most of the other Coastal Plain aquifers have been cut off by the crater and do not extend under Mathews County at all. So our groundwater source is primarily the Yorktown-Eastover and the surficial water table aquifers. We need to encourage more hydrological research here instead of relying on projections based on studies in other areas with no common geological features.

When it's time to update the report for the state, the Board could consider citizen committees to explore the most current information available from the DEQ and USGS and take full advantage of the assistance they offer towns and counties in preparing our own local water supply planning report instead of being lumped in with the rest of the Middle Peninsula Planning District which has nothing in common hydrologically with Mathews County.

Thank you for your consideration,

Carol J. Bova

--------------------------------------UPDATE----------------------------------------

This afternoon (March 27, 2012) the BOS of Mathews County voted for the 333 page Resolution with a plethora of regulations regarding our water supply as recommended by the MPPDC.  Geneva Putt voted against it - the others all voted for it. 

Prior to the vote, Carol Bova gave an excellent review of the situation followed by a few others that also spoke against it. No one spoke for it.

The argument by the Board was that by law they had to have a plan  and it saved money to use this one rather than initiate a different one. After we had spoken against it, however, Chair Janine Burns did say that although it is passed "it is not provided for to be implemented"  as it didn't apply to us with our own private water wells unless there were an emergency such a severe drought.

This was only stated - not added in the language that was voted on. But it is a matter of record nevertheless and there is sufficient awareness of it, that I think we helped to put the brakes on their implementing it.

Sue Long