You Won’t Miss Your Water Till Your Well Runs Dry

Ward Archer and Jim Kovarik

With Protect Our Aquifer

“They’re coming for our water.” Thus began a rallying cry for the founding members of Protect Our Aquifer (POA) in December 2016. It was a commonsense recognition that TVA’s five new wells—predicted to extract 4-10 million gallons/day to cool their new gas plant—were a waste of drinking water. 

Extraction is the story of quantity, something most of us in Shelby County take for granted. We sit atop a large and wondrous tub of drinking water, but the TVA tussle alerts us to the need to protect our abundant riches. Other counties and regions have found their drinking water sources extracted, bottled, and sold—until they are gone. Battles with bottlers rage across America. Already, Niagara Bottling is pumping away in nearby Byhalia. We are as yet ill-prepared to deal with such an operation here in Shelby County.

POA has learned over the course of three years that the County indeed has lax laws due to those abundant riches and slim management due to small budgets. Communities who have watched their wells sucked dry caution counties like ours to put protections in place. We at POA now get this message, and as good stewards of our water, we hope to protect our resources with an eye on the future and a realistic notion of the wondrous water wealth where we live.

Good Intentions only go halfway

In the late 80s, leaders in Shelby County thoughtfully included “quantity” in the law. They set up the Groundwater Control Board whose purpose is “to secure, protect, and preserve the quality and quantity of the groundwater within the boundaries of Shelby County.” We understand Quality; contaminated drinking water is easy to understand. 

On the other hand, we treat Quantity as a given. Scientists estimate that the Memphis Sand Aquifer below Shelby County contains about 57 trillion gallons. This is a lake the size of Shelby County as deep as Clark Tower is high, according to CAESER, the water scientists at the University of Memphis. Sounds good. Sounds gigantic. Sounds sufficient. Sounds like nothing to worry about.

This was the case with the largest aquifer in America—the Ogallala Aquifer below the Great Plains of the Midwest. For over 40 years, pumping from the aquifer has exceeded its recharge rate by as much as 2 feet per year. Today there are some areas that can no longer be pumped, and recent estimates give it about 50 years before it’s all pumped dry. Our resource—the Memphis Sand Aquifer—is more heavily pumped than the Ogallala. What saves us is our recharge rate is higher than the Ogallala, so it is still not in the state of depletion.

Now is the time—no matter the size of our tub of water—to deal with depletion. As a national model, the Great Lakes Compact has been forged to protect against extraction and depletion. Even though the Great Lakes represent 90% of all fresh water in the US, states and provinces in the watershed basin of the Lakes are putting the lid on exporting their water. Strict laws now guarantee that those who border these Lakes will control the where and the why and the amount of extraction.

Water extraction and especially bottling wars are being fought throughout the states. These examples are eerily similar and contain identical elements of corporate pursuit and local resistance.

Battling Bottlers

Small towns in Maine have battled Nestlé’s extractions and expansions for decades. The world’s biggest bottler tapped Maine’s Poland Springs until those springs ran dry. In Hollis, Maine, the largest water plant in the world, Nestlé bottles three billion liters a year of Pure Life, the biggest brand in the world. This battle continues as locals fight to retain their water riches.

In the small town of Osceola, Michigan, 900 folks are also fighting Nestlé. The corporation pays just $200 a year to the state of Michigan to pump more than 130 million gallons of water each year, the source for their Ice Mountain Water brand. In the most recent local victory, a judge denied previous bottling claims (December 2019), The judge declared that bottled water is not an “essential public service,” noting that the "operation ultimately does deplete a critical agricultural resource faster than the aquifer can replenish itself."

The bottling battle has forced Washington state to be the first state to propose banning all extraction for export. The Cowlitz River watershed at the base of Mount St. Helens is where Crystal Geyser (CG) wants to pump 325,000 gallons per day. CG, a subsidiary of a Japanese Pharmaceutical firm, applied for a permit in spring 2019. The Lewis County Water Alliance, Cowlitz Tribal Council, and others all oppose CG's proposal to build a bottled water facility on the Cowlitz River. The groups say that the plant will harm salmon populations. The Tribal Council says: "Water is our first medicine.” Governor Jay Inslee says: extraction is “detrimental to the public welfare.” Advocates have supported the ban with the chant: “Washington’s waters belong to the people of Washington.”

Extraction already occurs upon our doorstep. Just south of Collierville in Byhalia Mississippi, Niagara Bottling set up shop in 2018 to extract water from below the Memphis Sand Aquifer, bottle it, and send it to the corners of the Wal Mart world. This enterprise built a 554,000 square foot plant, with hundreds of trucks a day hauling over a million bottles per day—elsewhere. Yes, our neighbors are now in the business of selling drinking water, virtually for free.

It is only a matter of time before a bottler shows up in Shelby County and starts extracting millions of gallons a day to quench a thirsty planet where 25% of the population is facing a freshwater crisis. And as a cautionary message to leaders in Shelby County, Washington leaders note: “The fact that we ha(d) incredibly loose, if virtually nonexistent, policy guidelines around this (extraction for export) is shocking and a categorical failure."

So, the work of POA now leads us far beyond fighting misplaced or wasteful wells. It has carried us to reforming well regulations, resurrecting and asserting old ordinances, strengthening water management at the Health Department, and educating politicians and the public. The time is long overdue to pass a prohibition on extraction for export. The time is now to say: Shelby County water belongs to the people of Shelby County.

To learn more about Protect Our Aquifer visit us at protectouraquifer.org and join our Facebook discussion at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ProtectOurAquifer

Niagara_Water Bottling.