New effort looks to develop way to conserve, use natural resource until 2050

By Patrick Garmoe
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Monday, November 13, 2006

Around the world, water is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity.

Experts say that could happen even here in the suburbs. Indeed, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties likely will face serious water shortages in the next 20 years.

This week, nearly a year after Gov. Rod Blagojevich ordered a statewide study of water supplies, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning will hold a public forum to launch the first part of that effort.

Initially, the study will focus on water supplies in the Northeast Illinois counties of Cook, DuPage, Lake, Kane, McHenry, DeKalb, Boone, Grundy, Kankakee, Kendall and Will.

This area was picked because it sits over the northeastern Illinois deep bedrock aquifer, which supplies much of the drinking water to local communities that don’t receive Lake Michigan water.

Aquifers are underground layers of rock water travels through.

The Illinois State Water Survey will be doing the research to come up with firm figures on how much water flows beneath and through these counties.

But the study is only half the process.

A group of 32 volunteers who live in the 11-county study area will meet once a month beginning in January to help steer the process.

They likely will hire outside consultants to project water needs through 2050, said Derek Winstanley, chief of the state water survey, and one of the early proponents of this plan.

Based on the data, the volunteer committee, called the Regional Water Supply Planning Group, will by 2009 make recommendations for regional water use that should be useful to everyone from state legislators to local township boards.

“It’s very much setting up a process and a framework for regional water supply management,” Winstanley said.

This same process will be repeated in east central Illinois with a group organized by the Mahomet Aquifer Consortium.

Unlike other states with limited water supplies, right now nothing like that exists in Illinois.

“There is no planning for water supplies,” Winstanley said. “There is no law that prohibits anybody from withdrawing any amount (of water) you want.”

This is an effort to come up with some comprehensive research on water for the state, and set policy based on it, said Tom Garritano, director of communications for the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, formerly the Chicago Area Transportation Study and the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission. So far, the Illinois legislature has set aside $1 million to get the project going.

Currently, conservation efforts by a local community or county can be rendered useless if its neighbor isn’t doing likewise, Winstanley said.

Kane County, for example, is leading the charge toward making sure its residential growth won’t overburden the supply, but that’s just one county, Winstanley said.

“We need the same level of details for the other counties as well.”

Because the water issues are regional, it makes sense to split the state up and make decisions based on those regions, instead of locally or statewide, Winstanley said.

While northeast Illinois relies primarily on aquifers and Lake Michigan water, southern Illinois uses mainly surface water sources such as rivers, lakes and reservoirs.

The plan also follows warnings from engineers and hydro-geologists across the state that need may one day outstrip supply in certain suburban areas that can’t rely on Lake Michigan water.

According to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Illinois might need 20 to 50 percent more water in coming decades, just to keep up with projected growth.

As many as 23 townships in Illinois — including some in suburban Chicago — may run short of water over the next 25 years, some water experts said they believe.

While scattered groups across the state have been attacking the problem, right now there’s no unified study to look to nor plan.

“Probably our biggest concern is increasing withdrawals from the deep bedrock aquifer that underlies the whole region,” Winstanley said.

During the 1980s so much construction was going on in DuPage County that this aquifer was being severely depleted.

That time, communities were bailed out thanks to Lake Michigan.

But so many suburban communities have stuck their cups beneath Lake Michigan’s spigot, there’s essentially no more room for any other towns.

“You can’t easily switch to a relatively easy solution,” Winstanley said.

The major options now include conserving water and taping more regularly into shallow aquifers, which are far harder to use than their deep counterparts.

“Our scientific study will be placing priority on those shallow aquifers,” Winstanley said. “One of the issues also is the very close linkages between ground water and river water.”

Pull too much from beneath the ground and it can affect how much water remains in rivers and lakes, he said.

Some engineers also have discussed pumping water from low population areas to high population areas.

If these first two studies go smoothly, the process will be repeated throughout the remainder of the state.

“I would hope the state could develop a permanent process to how we handle the water supply,” Winstanley said.