Will Water Use by the New School Affect the Village?
The answer is
yes!
In the 1980's, Loudoun County Sanitary Commission conducted a study
of the water usage of the village and the elementary school. At
the time the school had 110 students and used 1/3 of the total water
passing through Waterford's sewage system*.
Because the school is the largest water user in the village, increasing
its size will have a dramatic impact.
With 875 students, the new school's usage could be twice
that of the daily usage of the entire village, even with water conservation
measures. Adding to the pressure on the water table is the compounded
water use by new homes being built in the area.
What needs to be done:
- A village-wide hydrologic study
of water availability and sustainability must be made as part of the
process.
- The County needs to have a plan in the event that Waterford town
wells begin to fail.
* Water meters were placed on all incoming well lines.
Background
Waterford has about 80 homes on small
lots and all have their own domestic wells. Well yields vary but a
survey of the data of the Board of Health will show that we have exceptionally
low yields and very deep wells that produce very little water <2gal
per minute to a few pints per minute. In addition there are numerous
dry wells at depths greater than 600 feet. Three attempts to obtain
water on the Old School site directly opposite the Elementary School
by the Waterford Foundation failed to produce water. Some lots
have no water and wells go dry in droughts.
There is only one town-wide
survey of water usage and that was in the 80’s when LCSA still maintained
water metering of all wells using the newly installed waste water treatment
plant. The Waterford Citizens Association tabulated the usage data
from that survey and determined that 1/3 of the total Village water
budget was being used by the Waterford Elementary School at a time
when registration was about 100 students. An increase over that base
to 800 plus students in 2008 could increase that proportion of usage
by the school to 2 times the Village’s usage in the 1980’s. Simply
said, that equates to a doubling of the Village size.
Ground water reserves are subject to draw down and
this draw down affects the supplies of contiguous
wells and can easily have the effect of lowering the groundwater table
over a region the size of the village of Waterford. One large producer
can affect wide areas or particular wells depending upon the nature of the connectivity
and flow paths. It also is particularly important to understand that all homes
and the school are now connected to the sewer and many have been since 1982.
This means that every drop of water that was taken from the ground water reservoir
since 1982 has been removed from the groundwater system and discharged down steam
as effluent into the South Branch of Catoctin Creek, below the treatment plant.
In short we have been mining our limited water resources. The effect or
rate of that of depletion is unstudied and unknown at present.
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