The Rural Voice, 2001-03, Page 23forming the bed of the Maitland
River in places. In Ashfield
Township, north of Goderich, the
bedrock is much deeper.
he aim of the study is to find
out as much as possible about
the current health of the
groundwater, says Scott Tousaw who
is co-ordinating the project for the
Huron County Planning and
Development Department. It's hoped
to develop a baseline reading of
groundwater quality against which
later monitoring can be measured for
improvement or deterioration. The
hope is that once the main study
winds up, to have several sentinel
wells from which ongoing quality
tests will be carried out.
Rick Steele, watershed
information co-ordinator with the
MVCA, has been involved in the
Huron study. The county's two
conservation authorities, Maitland
and Ausable-Bayfield, were asked to
study areas where surface water will
infiltrate more quickly into the
groundwater. In most cases, this is
into the shallow aquifers of sand and
gravel, Steele says, but in rare cases
there may be a more direct
connection with the deep aquifer.
These are the areas that are most
susceptible to contamination from
farming practices, he says. Mapping
these areas may lead to policies like
higher requirements for things like
nutrient management plans, in order
to reduce the danger to the aquifers.
Because deep aquifers move so
slowly and often replenish very
slowly, the danger of contamination
is particularly significant, says
MacPherson. "Deep ones, if they are
contaminated, could be a real
problem," he says.
While studies like Huron's
explore the quality of the water
underground, the goal of the
AEMOT study is to understand more
about how much water is
underground in northern Grey
County. Impetus for the study came
from the prolonged drought in 1998
and 1999, says Susan Motkaluk.
Farmers in the former townships of
Artemesia, Euphrasia, Melancthon,
Osprey and the Town of The Blue
Mountains were concerned because
they couldn't get enough water to
water their cattle but they were
seeing tanker trucks carrying local
water off to bottling plants.
The report of the committee was
to be presented at an open house
meeting in Flesherton February 21
prior to the drafting of the final
report, due March 31. The meeting
was to deal with continued
groundwater plan development
including the preparation of aquifer
vulnerability mapping, initial aquifer
models with a "permit to take water"
data base, and preliminary
assessment of management plan
options and policies.
Already some steps have been
taken to protect groundwater. On
January 11 at Melancthon Township
offices, a preliminary aquifer
vulnerability mapping and additional
LANDSAT satellite landuse
information was presented.
Recommended groundwater man-
agement policies were incorporated
in the new official plan of the
Municipality of Grey Highlands.
Much of the research has involved
bringing together already gathered by
the Ministries of Natural Resources
and -Environment, conservation
authorities plus some new field data.
One of the problems was getting the
information from the various sources
to fit together, says Motkaluk. It
required a huge amount of work to
make it all come together.
While the study, funded by
Groundwater Protection Fund, is a
short term project, the challenge is to
put long term solutions in place, says
Motkaluk. The hope is to put
together a partnering model which
will bring all interested groups and
stakeholders together to assure the
future health of the aquifer system.
While opponents of water taking
in Grey and Bruce counties, where
there are now dozens of companies
trucking water away to bottling
plants, are concerned about how
much water is coming out of the
ground for export, there are major
water users close to home as well.
For instance, MacPherson says a
MVCA study in the Listowel area
showed 20 per cent of the water
going down the Maitland at that point
came from Listowel's discharges of
water taken from the deep aquifers. It
amounts to about a million gallons a
day, he said.
Every other town and village in
the region except for those that are
located along the Iakeshore, also
draw water from the aquifers. As
well, today's Targe, modern livestock
operations require increasing
amounts of water — small amounts
relative to the overall scheme of
things but the cumulative effect can
be significant.
Water taken from deep aquifers
doesn't recycle locally. As
MacPherson pointed out in the
example of Listowel, water pumped
up from deep below the surface is
discharged, after treatment, into the
Maitland River where it will
eventually make its way to Lake
Huron and from there down the St.
Lawrence River system to the ocean.
How does the goundwater
recharge? Environment Canada's
factsheet describes the hydrologic
cycle that sees water fall on the earth
as rain or snow, becoming surface
water some of which sdeps into the
soil as soil Moisture. Some of this
percolates down to the saturated
zone. This zone feeds the
groundwater which slowly moves
toward lower points.
"Eventually, this water reappears
above the ground." the factsheet says.
"Groundwater may flow into streams,
rivers, marshes, lakes and oceans, or
it may discharge in the form of
springs'and flowing wells.
"Groundwater discharge can
contribute significantly to the surface
water flow. In dry periods, the flow
of some streams may be supplied
entirely by groundwater. At all times
of the year, in fact, the nature of
groundwater formations has a
profound effect on the volumes of
surface runoff."
Even surface water is affected
by groundwater since the
amount of rain or melting
snow that flows across the earth and
into streams is determined by how
saturated the soil is and its ability to
absorb more water.
The good news, says MacPherson,
is that last summer's heavy rains
followed by this winter's heavy
snows, will help bring up soil
moisture levels and eventually, fill up
the aquifers.again. That may end the
short-term concerns of the past few
years of drought, but there's so much
to be learned about the aquifers
before we will know if we're treating
them in a sustainable manner.0
MARCH 2001 19