With less than two years left to finish the State Water Plan and with Pennsylvania at the first stage of drought conditions, the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held an informational meeting on the state’s Water Resources Planning efforts.

The Committee heard from John T. Hines, Executive Director of DEP’s Office of Water Management, Carol Collier, Executive Director of the Delaware River Basin Commission, Tom Beauduy, Deputy Director of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission and Mark Gutshall, LandStudies, Inc.

Act 220 of 2002 directed DEP to finish a comprehensive update to the State Water Plan by March 2008.

To implement the Act and update the Plan, John Hines noted DEP developed a four tier approach--

Tier One – collecting data and developing the analysis tools to look at that data. DEP is using the USGS Screening Tool as the foundation of an effort to develop a statewide water budgeting tool, the Water Use Analysis Tool is being used to estimate current use and project demand and the Yield Analysis Tool helps assess current and future capacities of water suppliers.

Hines said DEP is about 85 percent complete in registering major water users under the Act and has worked with the Susquehanna and Delaware River Basin Commissions to coordinate water user information.

DEP is also pulling together discharge monitoring reports (DMRs) to get a better picture of water discharges, particularly from smaller users and consolidating its internal water resource information databases to a single platform.

A major focus of this effort, Hines said, is to identify Critical Water Planning Areas where water shortages are likely to occur in the future.

Tier Two: The second prong of the effort involves the six regional Water Resources Advisory Committees and the development of a regional water atlas as an interactive way of providing local governments and others with useful water resources information.

So far the regional committees have tentatively identified key water priorities in each of their areas.

Tier Three: “Why Should We Care?” Hines noted that for eight of the last 10 years all or parts of Pennsylvania has been at some stage of drought conditions. This step is designed to educate the public and water users about the importance of water to the environment and our economy and lifestyle.

Tier Four: Statewide Action Agenda. The intent of the State Water Plan is to identify the gaps and water needs in the state and designate Critical Water Planning Areas. This step will outline the actions needed to deal with these gaps and to plan each of the Plan updates that must occur every five years.

Carol Collier, Delaware River Basin Commission, outlined several programs that relate to the development of Pennsylvania’s State Water Plan. They include the DRBC’s own Water Resources Plan for the Delaware, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Ground Water Protected Area, Water Conservation Plan, Keeping the Clean Water Clean and its Drought Management Program.

Tom Beauduy, Susquehanna River Basin Commission, said the Commission was actively involved in the planning process coordinating the registration of water users, helping DEP pull together discharge monitoring reports and helping develop and update water analysis tools as well as siting on several regional water planning committees.

Both Collier and Beauduy noted how critical accurate water resource information is to help both the environment and economic development.

To bring the usefulness of water resources planning down to the local level, Mark Gutshall of LandStudies, Inc. outlined a local project he has been involved in with SRBC, Pfizer, DEP and other local government partners.

Gutshall noted one of the tasks of Water Resource Planning was to identify Critcial Aquifer Recharge Areas, areas that are especially well suited to convey water from the surface to the groundwater table.

The SRBC, in cooperation with DEP and local governments in the Manheim-Lititz and Ephrata areas of Lancaster County did a pilot project to take available water resources information to identify local recharge areas. LandStudies was also involved.

Working with Lititz Borough and Pfizer, LandStudies pointed out the potential of one of the areas—a drainage swale through the Butterfly Areas development—to act as a recharge area to put water back in the ground to offset future water use by Pfizer. Water offsets are required by both SRBC and the DRBC.

Gutshall pointed out that restoring these water recharge areas had several potential benefits—

· A way for businesses and others to increase the water available for withdrawals regulated by the river basin commissions;

· A non-traditional, non-structural way for developers to meet stormwater management requirements for local developments;

· A way to generate water quality credits, because the technique will reduce nutrients and sediments; and

· The additional water will increase local stream flows during low-flow periods.

For more information, visit the DEP Water Resources Planning webpage .

Rep. Adolph (R-Delaware) is the Majority Chair and Rep. George (D-Clearfield) is the Minority Chair of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.

5/5/2006