Protecting Drinking Water in Vulnerable Landscapes

As one of this year’s Conservation Priorities, Wisconsin’s conservation and environmental community has chosen to promote legislation to protect clean drinking water from contamination in vulnerable landscapes.  In many parts of the state – most notably in a five-county region of northeastern Wisconsin – unsafe land disposal of agricultural, municipal, and industrial wastes has led to significant, and sometimes life-threatening, drinking water contamination.  The “brown water” incidents that have plagued communities like Luxemburg, Morrison, and Franklin in recent years are an ongoing threat to public health.

Northeastern Wisconsin is an area of high “karst potential” – that is, the shallow soils and highly erodable, fractured bedrock have a tendency to create cracks, sinkholes, and other direct conduits from the land surface to the groundwater aquifer below.  Because wastes applied to land can travel downward through these cracks at alarming speeds, the risk of groundwater contamination can be severe. 

Imagine: a landowner spreads agricultural or municipal waste on his land one day, and the family across the street has a contaminated well the next.  It happens all too often – and sometimes the family learns of the contamination only after a trip to the hospital.  The most dangerous groundwater pollutants from land-spreading of waste are bacteria and nitrate, both of which can easily be carried by groundwater and end up in a private or public well.

Because some landscapes are especially at risk of this kind of contamination, they need special protection.  The legislation being drafted by the conservation community will seek to create new, protective standards for land-application of waste in a designated Carbonate Bedrock Management Zone in northeastern Wisconsin; strengthen the Department of Natural Resources’ programs governing the land-application of all types of waste in all parts of the state; and increase the state’s ability to map and classify vulnerable landscapes.

Photos:
Above left: A stream in Calumet County disappears into a sinkhole, courtesy of Calumet County Land and Conservation Department

Above right: Small sinkholes in a field create direct channels for pollution to reach the groundwater below, courtesy of Door County Soil and Water Conservation Department

Protect Wisconsin’s Drinking Water
Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters’ Fact Sheet:

Final Report of the Northeastern Wisconsin Karst Task Force,
February 9, 2007