But for Mike Frey, it's considerably more difficult. Frey, operations manager for Middleton's water utility, is charged with finding water for an entire growing, thirsty city.

It's a task that has become increasingly more complicated because of the rapid growth that typifies Dane County's suburban communities.

That growth, experts say, means we are making more demands on the deep underground aquifer that supplies drinking water for all municipalities in the county - and affecting the lakes, streams and springs that make this such a pleasant place to live.

While Madison has struggled recently with water quality issues - high levels of manganese in some wells, for example, as well as industrial chemicals beneath the Isthmus - water quality reports from suburban communities reveal no major problems with contaminants.

But rapid growth and development across Dane County could eventually create more water quality problems and increasing use of groundwater, in the absence of a regional management plan, could cause at least local stresses on what is now a very reliable source of drinking water.

In recent studies of water supply issues statewide, Dane County is listed as one of a handful of areas in the state where rapid growth is having a discernible impact on the deep aquifer, which we depend upon for our drinking water, and on streams and wetlands and other surface waters that are also fed by groundwater.

"All the water is being used," said Randy Hunt, a hydrogeologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who has extensively studied the effect we're having on surface waters. "Even if we're not using it all, all of the other natural features such as wetlands and streams are."

We humans, however, have pumped so much water from the aquifer since pre-settlement times, according to the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, that its level has dropped some 60 feet in some spots.

The level continues to drop, according to experts, and several Dane County suburban cities report that they have had to lower some of their wells to find a ready supply of water - even from the deepest part of the aquifer.

"Siting a new well," said Frey, "is difficult."

As a result of such use, springs have dried up. The base flow of the Yahara River has dropped. Water from lakes Mendota and Monona now supplies the aquifer instead of the other way around.

Such effects, along with the difficulty of finding places to put municipal wells, are among the main concerns facing Dane County communities when it comes to drinking water.

"You can't put 500,000 people in this county without having some impact on the water system," said Michael King, division administrator for Dane County's Community Analysis and Planning Division. "It's a question of managing those impacts."

Growth worries

The surface waters and the aquifer are intimately connected, in ways that are just beginning to be understood.

For drinking water, all municipalities in Dane County rely upon a deep sandstone formation known as the Mount Simon aquifer. It is a natural wonder invisible to us but a wonder nonetheless because of the millions of gallons of fresh water that are stored in cracks and fractures in the sandstone.

Despite such a vast supply, the growth in the number of gallons we pump from the aquifer is beginning to give experts pause.

According to the Dane County Water Quality Plan, compiled in 2004 by the now- defunct Dane County Regional Planning Commission, we pump more than 60 million gallons a day from the aquifer, about 140 gallons per person per day.

Urban areas account for about 80 percent of groundwater use. The city of Madison is the thirstiest single user, pumping more than 30 million gallons a day.

While Madison accounts for more than half the total use in the county, suburban municipalities are using more and more.

King knows well the growth the region faces.

By 2030, he said, the county's urban service area - the area local governments serve with municipal sewer and water - will have grown from 100 square miles to 140 square miles.

The population is expected to grow by 153,000 people to nearly 580,000 in 2030. Many communities have plans to build numerous wells in the next five to 10 years. Fitchburg, for example, anticipates building two wells in the next 10 years to keep up with growth.

That growth has implications both because of increasing water use and because of the growth in the number of rooftops, parking lots and streets that will block the flow of rainwater necessary to recharge the aquifer.

Adding to the overall concern about adequate replenishment of the aquifer is the diversion of hundreds of thousands of gallons of treated wastewater away from the Yahara Lakes system.

The water is diverted nine miles south of the city of Madison into Badfish Creek, meaning it never gets a chance to replenish the aquifer from which it was drawn.

Disappearing springs

While adequate supply is not yet an issue, the increased pumping by Madison and surrounding cities has clearly had an impact on surface waters.

Ken Bradbury, a hydrogeologist with the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, said the flow of increasing amounts of lake water into the aquifer could have implications for water quality in the future.

Clearly, he said, what goes into our lakes - pesticides and fertilizers from farm fields and lawns, for example - could end up in the aquifer.

On the eastern shore of Lake Monona not far from Monona Drive in tiny Stonebridge Park, visitors will come across a curious leaning stone pagoda. It was built in the late 1800s to protect a spring.

A plaque notes that the pagoda sheltered Springhaven Springs, a favorite gathering place and a source of water from which neighborhood children loved to draw water for making lemonade in the summer.

Today, however, the pagoda covers nothing but dry, dusty ground. The spring, a victim of the urban area's need for drinking water, no longer flows.

Numerous other springs have also disappeared.

Data gathered from gauging stations at several streams throughout Dane County show drops, some dramatic, in the base flows of every single stream, including such valued cold-water trout streams as Black Earth Creek and Mount Vernon Creek.

The base flow of Token Creek, which has taken hits from booming growth in DeForest and Sun Prairie, has dropped from the 13 cubic feet per second that computer models showed may have existed in pre-settlement times to 10.6 cubic feet per second today.

Clinton Carpenter, a senior lecturer with UW-Madison's Nelson Institute, has watched with dismay as a rare ecological feature called a fen disappeared from the landscape of Syene Road in Fitchburg.

A fen is a unique kind of wetland, fed by cold groundwater and home to plants that generally are found much farther north in cooler climates.

But over the past 20 years, Carpenter said, the groundwater that had been nurturing the Syene Road Fen dropped until the fen could no longer survive.

"Twenty years ago it was a thriving wet fen," Carpenter said. "Now it's gone. . . . As we keep drilling more and more wells, we'll see more such impacts. That's certain."

Environmental concerns

Communities are already finding that environmental concerns are influencing their abilities to site and build municipal wells.

Recently, when Frey and other Middleton officials considered putting a well on city property near the green fringes of the Pheasant Branch Conservancy, they had to consider the impact of the well on the creek and its rich wetlands as well as the springs that feed the entire system.

Sophisticated computer modeling told them that putting a well there was not a good idea.

A high-capacity municipal well would drain too much water from the conservancy. So finding another site became necessary.

The city is now considering a site near Mendota County Park.

Water experts say it is not too early to think about ways to temper the impacts that our water-hungry habits have on such an important natural resource as the aquifer from which almost all of the county's drinking water is drawn.

One important step, they say, will be updating the countywide computer model used to calculate the impacts of new wells on the aquifer and on surface water as well as on other nearby wells.

Bradbury, who helped create the existing model 10 years ago, said pumping from the aquifer has increased so dramatically that the model is no longer as accurate as it needs to be to help make important future decisions about groundwater use.

Many officials also say more coordination is necessary between municipalities using the aquifer. With the loss of the Regional Planning Commission, no government body has stepped up to help manage and coordinate water use at a regional level, according to local water officials.

"That's probably a coming thing," King said. "And that's appropriate. There is just so much growth."