East Side Water Supply Project Reaches Out

UPDATE: 

The Madison Water Utility Board voted Tuesday, July 26 to approve all four proposed projects developed to improve the quality and supply of water on Madison’s East side.

The projects include: removing the contaminant tetrachloroethylene (PCE) from City Well 15, building a system to filter out iron and manganese in Well eight and seven and replacing the previously shut down Well three with another well.

 Over the next four years, Water Utility will implement one project a year, starting with construction of Well 15 in spring of 2012 and ending with the replacement of Well three in 2015.

Watch meeting coverage on the Madison City Channel. 

The Madison Water Utility and the East Side Water Supply Project Citizen’s Advisory Panel (CAP) held the first of two public meetings on Monday June 27, aimed at educating and engaging area residents in planning future water supply projects on the east side.

The project, called the East Side Water Supply Project, is an 18-month study focused on meeting the east side’s future water demands with an ample, quality supply of water that uses an efficient system of clean and safe wells.

During the event, citizens browsed large displays with graphs, maps and information depicting the east side’s current water supply system and projected future problems. CAP members provided additional understanding of displays, such as those proposing projects to address water supply issues.

Those attending the event gained insight into CAP and Water Utility’s months of research and meetings, which has been culminated into four main projects to be presented to the Water Utility Board on July 12, Water Utility General Manager Tom Heikkinen said.

CAP, a group of concerned east side citizens, engineers, hydrogeologists, experts and non-experts, has been instrumental in the development of these projects.

The group was first formed last fall by Water Utility to engage local citizens in the water supply project. Since then, CAP has held meetings, toured water facilities and met with Water Utility to understand, provide feedback and develop advisories for water projects on the east side.

These advisories have focused on conservation, water supply and evaluating water wells and quality, CAP Member Mark McColloch said.

CAP now aims to reach out to the wider community by holding events like the information session and question panel.

“Clean, safe drinking water is everyone’s responsibility,” Madeline Gotkowitz, Water Utility Board member and hydrogeologist, said during the panel. “It’s not just the government’s responsibility or water utility’s responsibility.”  

To educate attendees about future plans for water systems, the East Side Water Supply Project provided information about the four proposed projects, they include: installing a filter to remove iron and manganese from city Well number eight, installing the same filter for Well seven, developing a treatment facility for removal of the contaminant tetrachloroethylene (PCE) at Well 15 and building a new well, Well 45, on the east side to replace a previously closed well.

The Water Utility Board will vote to take on the projects July 26 following a public hearing and presentation July 12, Heikkinen said.

Of the four projects, each poses its own challenges, but removal of PCE from Well 15 requires more immediate attention than the others due to contamination approaching maximum levels allowed by the Environment Protection Agency, CAP Member Cassandra Garcia said.

If contamination reaches those levels, Well 15 can no longer operate, she said. The well would then shut down, straining water supplies.

Since November 1988, levels of PCE, a Volatile Organic Compound (VOC), in Well 15 have steadily increased to approach the EPA’s limit of 5 micrograms per liter, according to Water Utility reports. 

Contamination above this level holds possible cancer risks and liver problems during continued exposure over a lifetime, CAP member and east side resident Marty Cieslik said.

As for well seven and eight, the iron and manganese in the wells is defined as a secondary contamination problem, which creates more aesthetic problems than health ones, Cieslik said. These elements create discolored water, such as the brown water that has some residents complaining.

While Cieslik has heard residents raise concerns about water quality, few are concerned about water quantity when both are related, he said.

“Conservation, water quality and water demand… what you do in one area affects how you do things in the other area,” Cieslik said.

For this reason, CAP supports both conservation efforts and plans to install the new Well 45.

While east side residents may not experience water shortages on an average day, the area still requires a large capacity of water for emergencies, such as a fire when demand rapidly increases and stresses the water system, Cieslik said.

“Even though we are a water-rich society, we are asking people to conserve,” he said. “The more we conserve, the more we build in a factor of safety.”

Expressing the importance of conservation remains an important task for both CAP and Madison Water Utility.

On average, a Madison citizen currently uses about 73 gallons of water per day, a Water Utility report said. In the future, the City of Madison hopes to decrease that amount. 

By 2020, the goal is to reduce residential per capita use by 20 percent. In addition, the City aims to maintain the annual amount of groundwater currently being used at its present rate, the report said.

The rate at which Madison pumps water was estimated to be about 28.5 million gallons per day in 2009, the lowest amount in over a decade, another report said. 

This decrease in water use can largely be attributed to more efficient water fixtures in homes and commercial institutions, such as hotels and restaurants. Local companies and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have also greatly reduced their water consumption in recent years, leading to positive trends in water conservation, Heikkinen said.

But despite a general decrease in water use in Madison, projections show the east side’s current water supply will fail to meet projected average day water demands by 2030 if those demands experience high growth with an increasing population, according to charts at the event.

As for maximum day water demands, such as a hot summer day when people water lawns or wash cars, the current water system could not meet demands if two wells were inactive.

Therefore, if Well 15 goes untreated and is shut down and yet another well becomes unusable, the east side water supply will experience shortages.

While meeting water demands provides many challenges, finding quality water to meet those demands introduces even more intervening and difficult factors, Karl Patzer, an east side resident and frequent attendee at CAP meetings, said.

“The City isn’t just meeting requirements, but striving towards the best we can do,” he said.

It is these types of scenarios that CAP has sought solutions for during the past few months and now hopes to share with the greater east side public. 

For more information about the projects, visit the City of Madison's East Side Water Supply Project page.