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The Spring Creek Watershed New Drilling Ordinance Story By Todd Giddings, Ph.D., P.G., IGSHPA Accredited Trainer Reprinted from the First Quarter 2010 Pennsylvania Driller Newsletter of the Pennsylvania Ground Water Association Across Pennsylvania, 37% of its population, or 4½ million people have groundwater as their water source. In the 175 square-mile Spring Creek Watershed (hereinafter Watershed) in Centre County, more than 99% of the watershed’s 100,000 residents have groundwater as their water source. The groundwater is obtained from million-gallon-per-day public water supply wells and well fields, and from springs that include Big Spring in Bellefonte that flows at more than 10,000 gallons per minute and is the second largest spring in Pennsylvania. In spite of decades of efforts by the Pennsylvania Ground Water Association and other organizations to enact enabling legislation, Pennsylvania has no statewide regulations for the proper construction of residential water wells, geothermal supply and return wells, and geothermal boreholes. The number of geothermal heat pump system closed-loop boreholes that are being drilled is at least ten times the number of new house wells being drilled. The desire to be green, the cost savings for both heating and cooling, and the Federal geothermal tax credits are causing a boom in the geothermal industry even in this recession, while new home construction and new home well construction is very limited. Within the Watershed there are almost a dozen companies that are active in retrofitting closed-loop geothermal heat pump systems using heat-exchange boreholes to homes and commercial properties. When a million-gallon-per-day public water supply well that is located in the limestone and dolomite aquifers of the Nittany Valley floor of the Spring Creek Watershed is being pumped, the capture zone (area of direct pumping influence) will extend for many miles. Thousands of homes are located within most of the capture zones of these public water supply wells and well fields, and hundreds of these homes are being retrofitted with closed-loop geothermal heat pump systems. The Centre County League of Women Voters recognized that if these geothermal boreholes were not properly grouted with bentonite clay grout or neat cement grout, they posed a very significant threat of contamination to the groundwater resources of the Spring Creek Watershed. In June of 2009 the League convened a public forum to inform the Watershed’s residents about the contamination threat that improperly constructed and ungrouted residential water wells, geothermal supply and return wells, and geothermal boreholes posed to the groundwater resources of the Watershed. During the Forum, a map of the Watershed that showed the thousands of homes that were located within the capture zones of the public water supply wells provided a dramatic demonstration of the potential for ungrouted geothermal boreholes to provide contamination pathways into the groundwater aquifers of the Watershed. Following the public forum, concerned citizens and concerned municipal officials called for the creation of a new model drilling ordinance that could be enacted by each municipality within the Watershed. The Spring Creek Watershed has a unique commission that is comprised of the 13 municipalities within the Watershed and is called the Spring Creek Watershed Commission. The Commission, responding to the call for a Watershed-wide drilling ordinance, created a workgroup to create the model drilling ordinance. The Workgroup included two local consulting hydrogeologists, a Penn State Professor of Hydrogeology, a professional engineer, a professional planner, the regional code agency director, and the owner of a geothermal heat pump installation company. The Workgroup created a model ordinance that addresses isolation distances, approved casing materials, minimum casing lengths, approved grouting materials and procedures, and decommissioning requirements. The model ordinance speaks to only those location and construction aspects that relate directly to the protection of the groundwater quality in the aquifers within the Watershed. Thus the model ordinance does not address items such as a minimum yield for a residential well or the heat extraction capacity of a closed-loop geothermal borehole. A municipality is able to add additional requirements to the model ordinance if they see the need to do so. Seven of the municipalities are currently reviewing the model ordinance and plan to implement it as a local municipal ordinance under the authority of the Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Code that enables municipalities to enact ordinances to protect the public health, safety, and welfare. The other six municipalities in the Watershed are members of a regional building code enforcement agency, and will be implementing the ordinance within the Property Maintenance Chapter of their regional building code. It is planned to offer training to the code enforcement inspectors and the municipal employee inspectors and contracted inspectors concerning the critical elements of the on-site inspections. To have the model ordinance being enacted within eight months of the public forum shows that both the residents and the municipal officials within the Spring Creek Watershed value the Watershed’s groundwater resources and want to protect them from the contamination threats that are posed by improperly constructed residential water wells, geothermal supply and return wells, and geothermal boreholes. The creation of this model ordinance by the Spring Creek Watershed Commission demonstrates a high degree of inter-municipal cooperation and support. The Spring Creek Watershed Commission and its model ordinance appear to be a unique occurrence within Pennsylvania.
Reprinted from the First Quarter 2010 Pennsylvania Driller Newsletter of the Pennsylvania Ground Water Association
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