Selectman Mike Jones writes of the efforts of Democratic Selectmen to have the town extend the water restrictions, now in force only for those who use Bridgeport Hydraulic Co. water, to all residents, including those who draw their water through private wells.
While Ridgefielders everywhere have enjoyed a wonderfully sunny and warm summer, most of us also have been pleased to see the skies darken with rain over the past two weeks. This has been a severe drought. For more than a year rainfall has been substantially below average. If the past two weeks signal the beginning of the end of this drought, then good riddance, I say. But even if the drought is over there is important work to be done.
Wisely, about six weeks ago the Selectmen imposed severe restrictions on water uses in town. But by law those restrictions can only apply to those homes and businesses served by public water provided by Bridgeport Hydraulic Co. (BHC), the town's water company. This leaves nearly 6,000 homes in town (about 75% of the total) free to use or abuse their water from private wells. It's time to change this outdated ordinance to ensure that the water supply for the entire town is carefully protected.
Every drop of "public" water used in town is pumped from a local network of deep wells and one spring-fed pond. (BHC's pipeline from Georgetown is an important enhancement but only will supply about half of the town's needs when it is finished in 2002.) These wells tap the local aquifers which merge together underground and feed our lakes, ponds, the Great Swamp and eventually the Ridgefield Brook and the Norwalk River. As the drought progressed, BHC accumulated irrefutable evidence that the water table was falling as more than 6,000 wells sucked water out of the ground faster than Nature could replenish it. A handful of wells have gone dry and the State D.E.P. briefly required BHC to shut down one well. The situation was, and remains, serious.
Meanwhile, the Selectmen received numerous calls from citizens reporting water abuses. While some jawboning was successful a few homeowners chose to flaunt the use of "their" water. But it isn't "their" water, it's our water.
It's true that common law holds that most groundwater belongs to whomever owns the land above the aquifer. But when many users tap the same aquifer the aquifer becomes a common-property resource. Other examples of common properties are the whales and fish in the sea, the air we breathe, the Federally-owned grazing lands in the west, and the bison which roamed the Great Plains. Economic theory clearly predicts that common properties will be abused because individuals sharing the resource enjoy its full benefits but avoid the full costs of their behavior. This is why whales are endangered, our oceans are over-fished, our air is polluted, our Federal lands are denuded by over-grazing and the bison are gone.
When I asked the town attorney to research this issue, he found it feasible for the town to regulate private wells in a water emergency. However, progress on this modest proposal was stonewalled by all three of the Republican Selectmen who argued the Town had no right to infringe upon the ability of private citizens to use their private property. This narrow-mind construction of the law is legally incorrect, economically unwise and environmentally disastrous. The Town has every right, indeed, an obligation, to protect vital public resources. Anything less is pointless posturing.
For the foreseeable future, all of our water is going to come from our wells. It's time for the Republican Selectmen to pull their heads out of the sand. For our own selfish needs, we need a healthy environment and that means clean water from free-flowing aquifers. We need to act now to protect them. We should modify the Drought Emergency Ordinance to ensure that the Town can take whatever steps are required to protect those irreplaceable resources. If we fail to act now, those Republican Selectmen may ponder the fate of another common property lost in the 18th century to avaricious sailors: the Dodo bird.
Sources for further reading:
--G. Tyler Miller, "Living in the Environment", 10th edition, Jr.Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1998
--Case, Fair et al., "Principles of Economics", 4th Ed., Prentice Hall, 1996
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