WAYNE CREED
Wake Up to Danger of Saltwater Intrusion

By WAYNE CREED

July 21, 2014

A few nights ago, plagued by a fit of insomnia, I downloaded a copy of the Cape Charles Planning Commission’s June 30 meeting agenda. Hoping the content would induce a much needed sleep, I quietly perused the document. As usual, it was filled with the same vapid and gooey pap that has come to define the Natali-McCoy Planning Commission. There was some talk of promoting a museum for the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater, but then, buried deep down in the weeds, a discussion of saltwater intrusion, and how it will affect the Town. In a cavalier, dim, nonchalant tone, it states:

The Town has limited groundwater resources. In the future, saltwater intrusion may necessitate the Town update water treatment technologies or possibly obtain water from a different location. 

So, what are they talking about? In a nutshell, saltwater intrusion (high concentrations of total dissolved solids making it unfit for human consumption) is the movement of saline water into freshwater aquifers. Aquifers are saturated geologic materials that yield usable quantities of drinking water to wells. In our case, we rely on the Columbia and Yorktown-Eastover aquifers and there are no other viable economical alternative drinking water sources. The Columbia and Yorktown-Eastover aquifer is considered highly vulnerable to salt water contamination due to the high levels of ground-water pumping from coastal wells (like our Keck wells). As towns like Cape Charles continue to over-develop (large developments such as Bay Creek ), ground-water use increases to the point that these areas become vulnerable to contamination and brings into question the viability of ground-water sustainability.

Well drillers around here can attest to the abundance of bad-tasting ground water in parts of southeastern Virginia– a large body of salt water, known as a salt water wedge has been blamed for undrinkable ground water that extends from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay into the Columbia and Yorktown-Eastover aquifers. For many years, scientists thought the wedge was caused by the incomplete flushing of ancient seawater that had invaded the aquifers during high stands of the sea. Understanding of Virginia’s inland saltwater wedge changed in 1993 when David Powars of the U.S. Geological Survey and geologist C. Wylie Poag, while studying the Atlantic Coastal Plain made an important discovery. Deep sedimentary cores identified a large impact crater formed by a meteorite near what is now the mouth of Chesapeake Bay ( three times larger than any other U.S. crater and the sixth largest crater known on Earth).

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Approximately 35 million years ago, the meteorite smashed into Southeastern Virginia, through the water column and thousands of feet of unconsolidated sediment and underlying granitic crust, disrupting underground aquifers. Fresh ground water can’t reach the salty water inside the crater to flush it out, causing undrinkable ground water inside the arc from Virginia’s lower Eastern Shore to Hampton Roads. It should be noted the water inside the crater is 32 percent saltier than sea water, making it almost impossible to use. The low hydraulic conductivity of the crater structure affects hydraulic responses to local and regional groundwater pumping stresses, increasing the potential for saltwater intrusion in areas like the lower Eastern Shore.

Across the Bay in Chesapeake, the city just spent $75 million on a new well field and desalinization plant in an effort to replace prevalent unreliable surface-water supplies. When Cape Charles states it will need to update water treatment technologies, this is what they are talking about. Of course, when the time comes, the cost will more than likely be much higher. Desalinization is also extremely energy intensive and expensive, which, if Cape Charles plans for this to be the sole source of drinking water, will certainly drive utility bills over the top.

It seems ironic that Cape Charles now wants to create a museum celebrating the very impact event that will eventually make the Eastern Shore uninhabitable. But, maybe uninhabitable isn’t such a bad thing. A few weeks ago, sitting in the Bay with friends, they were reflecting on John Smith’s notes describing how clear and full of fish the Bay used to be. I have often wondered about this too, and now, with sick oysters, not enough sea grass to protect juvenile crabs, dead zones — what would it be like if nobody lived in the Bay Watershed?

Playing the game, and given that the meteor may have hit 35 million years too soon, are there steps the government could now take to accelerate the process of removing humans from the Eastern Shore?

—  Locally, cut large developments off from all access to water and sewer services, forcing them to finance their own water treatment facilities, or close up.

— At one point, I was a proponent of the Public Service Authority, and running a pipe out to Route 13 as a way to promote the removal of antiquated septic systems. I have come to realize that this will only result in nefarious uses, and will just promote more sprawl and degradation. Disband the PSA, stop the pipeline.

— When Federal Judge Sylvia Rambo ruled last year that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can set pollution limits for the Chesapeake Bay, upholding the Total Maximum Daily Load limits set in 2010, the DEQ and EPA may be able to take it a step further, and ban new construction on septic tanks in sensitive Coastal areas. This would de facto stop all new construction and sprawl, and would force households with failed systems to move to town or village clusters.

Obviously, these draconian steps will never happen, yet the post-apocalyptic trope is an old one, and has been rehashed many times in science fiction. However, as the Mayan society showed, an entrenched civilization can certainly vanish. So, what would the Eastern Shore be like without us? Unmaintained structures would, as water gained a foundational hold, deconstruct and collapse. Eastern Shore native plants would proliferate, wildlife and predatory mammals would flourish, and the Bay would quickly rebound — giant schools of menhaden would provide a grand buffet for predatory fish and raptors, grasses would thicken, and oysters and clams, freed from contamination, could once again become functionally relevant. In 100 years or less, there would probably be very little evidence anyone ever lived here at all. We are seeing this now as ghost towns in the Midwest disappear and great herds of Bison are returning to their rightful place on the Great Plains.

On his death bed, Leo Tolstoy implored people to stop procreating, have the race die off, and let the world, and humanity, “go back to God.” For a genius who created Anna Karenina, he was too impatient to await a rapture event like in 1 Thessalonians 4:16. Just like the saltwater intrusion problem, our eventual departure may be more a slow, dull turning — the result of our consumptive drive eventually outstretching our resources. Whether the convergence of technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science fundamentally change us, culminating in some transhuman metamorphosis, in the end human existence may just be incompatible with the natural environment.

As Tolstoy understood, the world will never become a lush garden again with us here. Still, even as enjoyable a notion it is for the world to return to its wild, natural beauty, the thought of it happening without us is wholly unfulfilling. Oddly, I read something on a Seventh Day Adventist pamphlet that at least produced a pathetic sliver of hope in my bored, cynical soul, “a simple, wholesome lifestyle, where people do not step on the treadmill of unbridled over-consumption, accumulation of goods, and production of waste. A reformation of lifestyle is called for, based on respect for nature, restraint in the use of the world’s resources, re-evaluation of one’s needs, and reaffirmation of the dignity of created life.”

Sounds good, but, we better start saving up for that desalination plant, just in case.

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3 Responses to “WAYNE CREED
Wake Up to Danger of Saltwater Intrusion”

  1. Thomas D. Giese on July 21st, 2014 8:40 am

    I completly agree with Mr. Creed, all humans should be required to leave the Eastern Shore and return the land to nature. However, I do not want the process to start until Brigitte and I are with our Maker.

  2. Joseph Corcoran on July 21st, 2014 7:29 pm

    “Sounds good, but, we better start saving up for that desalination plant, just in case.”

    I once lived in Saudi Arabia in the city of Al Jubail . Next to Al jubail is the desalination plant for the city Al Riyadh. The Town of Cape Charles would fit into the corner of the workers housing area for the plant. Anyone talking about desal as the solution for Cape Charles’s water needs is out of touch with reality.

    Just up the highway from Al Jubail is something called ARAMCO and the amount of oil it provides for desal would bankrupt the state of Virginia.

    We better get serious about a practical solution to the impending water shortage.

  3. Wayne Creed on July 22nd, 2014 8:42 am

    Thanks Joe, good lessons learned from the desert,and after your insights, I’m more pessimistic. What is worrisome, due to geology, there really isn’t a practical/economical solution (as VB, Norfolk, Hampton and Chesapeake are finding out)…once these aquifers collapse, the next best bet would be piping it in from Lake Gaston…NC has already told VB and Chesapeake no…like the poet said, “Water, water, every where,
    And all the boards did shrink;
    Water, water, every where,
    Nor any drop to drink.”

    Yeah, we probably shouldn’t have shot that albatross.