Tensions rise over saltwater intrusion into BR aquifers

The Capital Area Ground Water Conservation Commission has had one task for the past 40 years: to blunt the threat of underground saltwater fouling the Baton Rouge area's prized fresh-water supplies.

Critics claim the commission has done little to combat the saltwater encroachment, a movement accelerated by the massive pumping from aquifers under the city by industry and by companies that sell water to homeowners and businesses.

Frustration about the slow pace of action prompted a bill before the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee last month that would lessen pressure on the freshwater aquifers by limiting what industry uses. The legislation would have imposed a timeline for industry to start pumping what it needs from the Mississippi River, as is done elsewhere in Louisiana.

The bill was quickly withdrawn before the committee had a chance to vote on it.

"It's hard to beat industry at the Legislature," said Hays Town, a retired contractor and engineer who founded the group Baton Rouge Citizens to Save Our Water Inc. The group wants to curtail industrial use of the aquifer and claims the commission is beholden to the petrochemical companies and paper mills that use it.

The commission is made up of three representatives from industry, three from public water suppliers, a member from each of the five parishes around Baton Rouge, a member nominated by the board itself, one member from the Louisiana Farm Bureau/Cattlemen's Association and a member from the state Department of Natural Resources.

DNR Commissioner of Conservation James Welsh has called on the commission to find a solution. In a letter last fall, he said the commission should "develop a full-scale plan of action with specific steps and goals set out for long-term resolution of the saltwater intrusion issue, an effort in which the Office of Conservation stands ready to assist."

Welsh wrote that "simplistic solutions that capture the public imagination such as solely limiting industry use" or depending solely on a well to divert the saltwater "fail to solve the problem and could make things worse."

Although the Office of Conservation has general powers in regard to aquifers in the state, it's the Capital Area Ground Water Commission that has legislative authority to easily make changes to how the aquifer is used, according to Patrick Courreges, a spokesman for DNR. For example, he said, DNR doesn't have the authority to ban withdrawal of water from the aquifer, but the commission could do so with a vote of the board.

"They're their own body," Courreges said.

The ground water commission argues that the natural underground water system is complicated, and caution is needed to avoid making the problem worse.

"This is not a problem that's going to be solved overnight," Anthony Duplechin, director of the Capital Area Ground Water Conservation Commission, told the house committee.

Town said he asked state Rep. Edward "Ted" James II, D-Baton Rouge, to present the bill, which would have set limits on industrial withdrawal from the aquifer in north Baton Rouge over the next six years.

Currently, about half of the 170 million gallons drawn daily from the aquifer in Baton Rouge is used by industry, with the water companies accounting for the other half.

For decades, it's been known that extensive pumping from wells north of the Baton Rouge Fault — a giant crack in underground formations of clay, rock and sand — pulls saltwater from the areas further south. In 1974, the state legislature created the Capital Area Ground Water Conservation Commission with the specific intent to address the problem.

Duplechin claims the bill Town was backing would have declared the whole aquifer as impaired even though saltwater intrusion affects only a small part of it. He argued further that a process is already in place to make such a declaration if need be — and it's not through legislation.

"It's almost like legislating a guilty verdict for someone who hasn't been found guilty," Duplechin said.

He defended the commission's actions to address the problem.

"I've been here three years, and I think we've done a lot," he said.

As to the activity of the commission in the decades before that, Duplechin said the problem might not have been seen as pressing because it was progressing slowly. However, he said, that has changed.

"We can't push it off any further into the future," he said.

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Taxonomy

• Aquifer
• Aquifer Recharge
• Aquifer Recharge