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| Water
Withdrawal
, and everyone
wants some of its sweetness. Without water, of course, there
is no life – nor are there juicy tomatoes, or mossy green
golf courses, or fast, snow-covered ski runs during a dry winter,
let alone rivers and lakes with healthy fish and insect populations.
, you’re
infinitely more aware than those of us in the East that water
is a finite resource – or at least, you should be. Unlike
here, it doesn’t rain for months in some Western
locales – which is why you see those wonderful pictures
of surfer dudes riding the waves in October, but also why you
hear of water allocation wars where thirsty communities – residents,
farmers, tribes -- are fighting over who has a right to draw
water from a river, or aquifer, or lake.
that
water is a finite resource has hit home here in water-rich Maine.
And like many issues that concern the sustainability of our resources,
our laws have not kept pace with the growing evidence of the
environmental consequences of our actions. For centuries, we’ve
allowed virtually unfettered withdrawals of water from rivers,
streams and lakes, and that use is increasing every year. Southern
Maine’s housing development has placed greater demands
on drinking water supplies; farmers across the state are using
ever more water for irrigation; golf courses and ski resorts
want more and more water for fairways and snowmaking. But questions
are now being raised about how much water a river needs to remain
healthy. Take a lot of water out of a river in the summer and
it will get too hot and cook the critters in it. Divert too much
water from a river in the spring, and it won’t have enough
power to scour out channels and move gravel and sediment downstream.
How much water do we really need to leave in a river, so that
it can provide habitat for fish and insects who themselves provide
food for mammals and birds?
, when they directed the Board
of Environmental Protection to “adopt rules that establish
water use standards for maintaining in-stream flows and GPA
lake or pond water levels that are protective of aquatic life
and other uses and that establish criteria for designating
watersheds most at risk from cumulative water use.” For
the last three years, scientists at the Department of Environmental
Protection, working with colleagues in the US Geological Survey,
the Maine Geological Survey, the National Weather Service and
the Department of Agriculture have been trying to understand
how much water flows through the state’s watersheds and
when it flows. Through an incredibly complex series of investigations
and computations, they’ve come up with draft rules to
govern how much water each watershed needs to function properly,
and thus how much can be safely taken out of the state’s
rivers during six different periods during the year.
it was to come up with these “instream
flow rules,” from this point on, as the rules come before
the public and the legislature, things won’t be so tidy.
Mark Twain said that “Whiskey is for drinking, and water
is for fighting,” and in this case, we’re about
to find out what he meant.
– with
conservation, infrastructure improvements and adequate planning – to
meet diverse communities’ requirements for water, and still
leave enough in our rivers for them to thrive. Farmers, for example,
will need help to build storage ponds so they can take water
out during high flows and save it for the dry summer months;
they’ll also need technical assistance in acquiring or
adapting irrigation systems so that they conserve instead of
waste water.
rules
was circulated by DEP staff this spring; the formal draft rules
will be released for public comment in the fall. See http://www.state.me.us/dep/blwq/topic/flow/index.htm for
details. Maine Rivers will be collaborating with our colleagues
in the environmental community to present a series of public
education programs about this issue during the fall and winter;
check our website, www.mainerivers.org,
for future announcements. We are aware that the proposed rules
are but one piece of a much larger question we all face: How
do we use the resources we have sustainably? When it comes to
water, we’re dealing with the foundation of our lives;
it is a question that will take time and wisdom to answer.
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Sharri Venno is an Environmental Planner for the Houlton
Band of Maliseet Indians, as well as a new member of the
Maine Rivers Board. We asked her
to let us know just how her community in Northern Maine has tackled
the heavy pollution of the Meduxnekeag River – as an object
lesson in just what kind of effort it takes….over twenty
years, and with a huge number of partners.....to clean up a river. This
essay is her answer: |
No one remembers exactly when
large mats of stringy algae began turning the lower end of
the Meduxnekeag River green during summer low flows. However,
biologists first documented the condition in the 1960s and ‘70s
as part of fishing survey reports. Algae respiration
and decay cause dissolved oxygen levels in the River to fall
below the state-established water quality standard of 7ppm. In
2000, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (MDEP)
formally attributed the problem to nutrient contamination from
dischargers and agricultural activity in the watershed. |
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Photo: Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians
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The Meduxnekeag is the most intensively
farmed watershed in southern Aroostook County. The River
literally turns another color - brown, from large influxes
of farm soil – after snowmelt and storms, which is evidence
of the agricultural community losing their most valuable resource. Elevated
water temperatures, loss of fishery habitat and DDT in fish
add to the list of this river’s impairments.
Working together to help the river
“In the late 1980s, a group of interested
resource stewards got together and talked….and then
talked some more,” recalls Don Collins, then District
Conservationist with Soil Conservation Service (SCS) USDA. “The
Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians [HBMI] and Southern Aroostook
Soil and Water Conservation District [SASWCD] were leaders
in this process of identifying problems and problem solving
strategies. The result was the Meduxnekeag River
Watershed Management Plan/Environmental Assessment.” HBMI
had purchased trust land within the most affected 6 mile
stretch of the Meduxnekeag in 1986, and knew they needed
to be part of a watershed-wide effort if they were to help
improve conditions in the River. The Plan, drafted
by SCS and the US Forest Service, and published in 1993,
began supporting water quality protection activities throughout
the Watershed. For example, around 35 acres (@15,250
linear feet or 2.9 miles) of riparian buffer zone were
planted in the early to mid ‘90s. |
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Photo: Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians
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In 1995, MDEP and SASWCD established the
Meduxnekeag Watershed Coalition (MWC) as a community forum
for watershed management and water quality issues. Many
participants have and continue to develop joint water quality
projects as a result of discussions and relationships developed
at MWC meetings. Most recently, in 2002, some members
of MWC, interested in a more active approach to watershed management,
incorporated the Organization for Watershed Living (OWL) as
a nonprofit organization. OWL maintains a relationship
with MWC and benefits from the Coalition’s role as a
community education and outreach organization.
The Winter Cover Project: A Success Story
Thus, in 2002, when EPA published a request
for proposals under a newly established Targeted Watershed
Grants Program, partnerships were already in place to take
advantage of this highly competitive nation-wide program. It
was a testament to years of relationship building that so
many individuals and organizations participated in the scoping
process for this proposal. These included folks from
SASWCD, University of Maine Cooperative Extension, MWC, OWL,
Northern Maine Development Corporation, Resource Conservation & Development,
Maine DEP, Natural Resources Conservation Service and HBMI. It
would be our most ambitious effort to date.
After a couple of meetings to decide how
to best meet the grant criteria, we chose a project supporting
the adoption of conservation practices that provide cover on
otherwise bare potato fields during the winter. These
practices – planting winter cover crops and mulching
fields with hay or straw -- help keep productive agricultural
soil on the farm and out of the Meduxnekeag River. The
Watershed Protection Plan and Environmental Assessment, completed
almost 10 years earlier, proved invaluable in supporting our
proposal. One of 20 watersheds selected from 176 nominations,
we were awarded $700,000 (some of which went to a storm drain
study). |
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Bale Buster Photo: Houlton Band of
Maliseet Indians |
I worked with project partners throughout
the process, and wrote the grant proposal on the partnership’s
behalf. On a personal note, I can say that finding out
about the award was such an exciting moment, I’ve kept
Matt William’s (UMaine Coop. Ext.) message on my voice
mail telling me we got the grant!
Thanks to the long term relationships developed
in the Meduxnekeag and the joint efforts of these local,
tribal, state and federal partners, a growing number of farmers
in the Meduxnekeag Watershed are now using winter cover conservation
practices. In 2003, only four farmers used these practices
on a total of 285 acres; the estimated soil saved was 92
tons. One year later, fifteen farmers are using the
practices on 1,809 acres, saving an estimated 542 tons of
soil from moving into the river!
For more information about the Meduxnekeag’s
Winter Cover Project or EPA’s Target Watershed grants
program check out the following websites:
EPA’s
Targeted Watershed Grant Program website:
SASWCD’s website: www.saswcd.org |
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