A south eastern New Hampshire town is the site of a proposed water bottling plant. USA Springs wants a permit from the state to pump 439,000 gallons of water a day from a 100-acre site in Nottingham. Local residents and neighboring towns aren’t overly excited with the plan. Fears of dry wells, contaminated water and environmental impact abound. NHPR’s Dan Gorenstein reports.
This is our natural resources, what comes out of the town of Nottingham is our natural resources…If you guys think you can come in here, and suck all of our water out of here, you have another thing coming.
That’s Charley Reed, an organic farmer and Nottingham resident for over 25 years.
This is our natural resource. Barrington’s. Northwood’s. Nottingham’s. We don’t want you to take it.
Reed was speaking at a Department of Environmental Services public hearing about USA Springs plans to build a water bottling plant in Nottingham. Reed’s comments provoked Sarah Pillsbury, with the DES, to respond.
I can clearly appreciate the emotion that goes along with this subject. I think we need to step back here, and remember we live in a land of law. And that in NH, what you can do in terms of water withdrawal, is based on the laws of NH.
In the Granite state, if property owners want to pump more than 57,600 gallons of water a day, they must receive approval from DES. If a pump test determines the water withdrawal is going to affect other nearby wells, wetlands, or any other negative impact, the department can decline the permit request, or adjust the amount of water pumped. The pump test for this project is still months away.
Just off route 4 in Nottingham, is a gravel driveway that slopes up past some stone walls. A restored barn sits 50 feet away from two 2 ft. steel poles. They mark the first wells Ray Talkington tapped for USA Springs. Last spring the hydro-geologist explored the property in search of water.
After we looked at the original wells on site, they are great for a farm or residence, no problem, but for bottled water source, you will need to look at other areas to see if there are any areas on the site to give more water.
Talkington has studied aerial photographs of the area to find features that represent potential fractures in bedrock. He then set out on foot to find what he saw from the photos, what he called field truthing. The evidence confirmed the assumptions. Talkington indeed had found intersecting fractures in the bedrock. The more fractures that intersect, the higher the probability that water flows through the area. Based on those tests, USA Spring put the stakes in the ground and started drilling.
When the testing was done by the well drillers, it came at about 200 gallons a minute…that’s an instantaneous yield. What the state requires is a long term safe yield. In other words how much water can you safely pump from this well over a 180-day period without any recharge. We have to say, instantaneously, we can do the 200, but as a rule of thumb…the probable safe yield is 50% of that. So in this case, it’s around 100 gallons a minute.
With one well putting out 100 gallons a minute, USA Springs is counting on the other wells to help reach the goal of 305 gallons a minute.
And that number boggles Patricia Newhall’s mind. For Newhall a bottling plant is about as appealing as coal mining Mt. Washington. Newhall’s 96 acres in Barrington border the proposed site. A brook from Nottingham feeds into her pond with seven heron rookeries. Newhall says her land is a favorite for bear, moose and deer. It’s pristine, she says. And to keep it that way, she plans to put 80 acres of her property into conservation easement.
But the 72-year-old wonders if the plant would render her natural refugee void.
I am violently opposed to this whole idea, number 1, like they said at the meeting, it is a natural resource, I can not imagine if they out 300,000 gallons of water a day, it is not going to be too long before they drain it dry, and everybody’s wells and streams will dry up. And I really believe that.
Three miles from the USA Springs wells is a sizeable tract of land-1530 acres, in the process of becoming a protection area for public water supply. On site flow the headwaters for the Oyster and Bellamy Rivers, which serve Durham, Madburry, Dover the University of New Hampshire and parts of Portsmouth. There are also three stands of the rare Atlantic white cedar wetlands. UNH professor of natural resources, Bob Eckert chairs a local committee to preserve the land. He was at the DES hearing too.
My concern is that over a period of time, 10, 50, 100 years, I’m not sure the affects of a major withdrawal from an aquifer are predictable or known, b/c of the complexity of how water moves through an aquifer. Also, surface water concerns. This piece of land is being established as a public water supply protection in perpetuity.
The town of Nottingham wants to determine what affect pumping 305 gallons of water a minute will have on their town. The DES 10-day pump test will help that happen. During that time, Larry Banaka, a member of the town planning board and hydro-geologist himself, says the town will monitor residential wells, local wetlands and nearby lakes.
The town is going to be looking for a comprehensive monitoring, in other words, not just the affects on site, we have to look at affects of site, as well. The problem with a bedrock aquifer is it’s really hard to predict how outreaching the affects go.
While many at the DES hearing expressed concern over water quantity, local resident James Page is worried about water quality, especially radon.
when you draw down potentially a couple of hundred feet, something is going to happen. If you open up the voids in the soil, I am sure more radon is going to be released…I am also concerned about changes in the chemical content by the draw down. What is going to migrate into my area, increases in iron, magnesium, sulfates
DES says it will closely watch for the movement of contaminated plumes, but as far as radon goes, DES officials say a trend hasn’t been established between water table levels and radon. The department does not hold water quality hearings.
UNH hydro-geology professor Tom Ballestero is representing Nottingham. His job is to figure out the technical issues like the source of the pumped water, and identify what footprint of land will be affected. But making stabs at the affects is the best anyone can do at this point.
With very little field info, we make very large assumptions…It would not be unthinkable that affects go out 4000 ft, it would not be unthinkable that it went past 4000 ft.
4000 feet is a better part of a mile. But hydro-geologists, Ballestero, Banaka and USA Springs Ray Talkington all agree, better guesses about the affects will come only after the completion of the pump test sometime in early fall. For NHPR’s News, I’m Dan Gorenstein
