[Tom Zinnen, Outreach Specialist, Biotechnology Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Welcome, everyone, to “Wednesday Nite @ the Lab. ” I’m Tom Zinnen. I work here at the U.W.-Madison Biotechnology Center. I also work for U.W.-Extension Cooperative Extension, and on behalf of those folks and our other co-organizers, Wisconsin Public Television, the Wisconsin Alumni Association, and the U.W.-Madison Science Alliance, thanks again for coming to “Wednesday Nite @ the Lab”. We do this every Wednesday night, 50 times a year.

Tonight, it’s my great pleasure to introduce to you George Kraft. He’s a professor at U.W.-Stevens Point and a state specialist with U.W.-Extension Cooperative Extension. He was born in Chicago, went to high school in Palatine, Illinois, and graduated from high school in Cleveland, Ohio. He got his undergraduate degree and his master’s degree at Stevens Point. He came here to U.W.-Madison after working at the Department of Natural Resources for several years to get his PhD. And then he was able to get a professor position back up at U.W.-Stevens Point. So, it’s great to have somebody with three different connections to the U.W. System here.

He’s going to be talking about groundwater in the Central Sands. Quite germane issue. For George it’s been going on only a decade or so. It’s been in the news a lot the last week or two. I think it’s going to be a great combination of science and public policy. Something we do not too poorly here, which I really appreciate George coming down from Point to give us a talk on his research over the last 10 to 15 years. So, please join me in welcoming George Kraft to “Wednesday Nite @ the Lab. ”

[applause]

[George Kraft, Professor of Water Resources, University of Wisconsin-Extension and University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point]

Thank you, everybody. It’s – its wonderful to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this since Tom first called me. And I have this very warm feeling, very safe feeling. I – I think if I collapsed here on stage and Tom said, “Is there a doctor in the house?” there’d be 30 hands go up.

[laughter]

Unfortunately, there’d be like six geologists and a bunch of biochemists.

[laughter]

And finally, an M.D. or a D.O. would come up and go, “Nah, I just do livers. I – I don’t do heart attacks. ”

[laughter]

So, groundwater has been making a lot of news, not just here, but nationally, internationally. I kept track this week of what was – what was turning up in the – in the newspaper and – and the news. So, Bloomberg news had a report in it on its opinion page that India needs to get its groundwater house in or there’s overdraft going on in places there. Too much water being used, and – and the water is going to heck there. Arsenic killing people because they’re pumping too much for agriculture over there. Our – our – our host, Tom, sent out a – a note where he mentioned the Ogallala Aquifer and what’s going on in the western part of the state aquifer covering multiple parts of the state. And after years and years and years and years of warnings that this was going to happen, there’s places in Kansas now and nearby states where irrigated farmers are giving up the ghost. They’ve -theyve drained this sucker. They drained it way more quickly than they needed to. If you read the old book “Cadillac Desert” – Anybody here? They talk about already in the 1980s, they figure, “Eh, we’re gonna drain this sucker and the government’s going to bail us out someday.” Well, it’s – its draining and – and nobody’s bailing them out.

Waukesha, you know the reason for the – the Great Lakes diversion is because we’re drawing too much water down in the deep sandstone aquifer over there. And Saudi Arabia, that’s been just a few months back rather than just the other day or this week. But Saudi Arabia, they did this experiment with irrigated agriculture in the desert drawing water up from this aquifer. That was, you know, thousands or maybe tens of thousands of years old, depleting it just in the blink of an eye, comparatively by geologic time. And now they’re – theyre shutting this down. So, you know, we got a lot of issues when it comes to groundwater. How many, kind of, groundwater at least aficionados here? [raises his hand]

[laughter]

Oh, come on. Some of you are being –

[wide shot of the audience with one or two hands raised]

– Yeah. Okay.

[George Kraft, on-camera]

Being shy here. But, okay, what’s this groundwater stuff? Groundwater is the water underground in the –

[slide titled, Groundwater, featuring the pronunciation of groundwater and its definition as – water underground where the pores and crevices are saturated with water. This water flows by gravity and can be pumped from wells. At the bottom of the slide is an illustration of a cross-section of earth between a stream and a lake with trees on the surface of the ground and a dashed line below the ground indicating the water table and a solid line at the bottom indicating the confining unit. In the middle of the cross-section on the ground it is labeled surface water divide, and between the surface and the water table it is labeled groundwater divide. The slide also shows rain coming down from clouds to the surface and then going under the ground and the water table and flowing either left toward the stream or right toward the lake]

– in the pores between sand grains or the cracks in the rock where it’s saturated. I think you all have a feeling that you know that soil is – contains water. But it’s – its not saturated. But pretty much anywhere we go in the Earth – if we go deep enough, we’ll hit the water table, which is the zone below which all the spaces in the geologic media is saturated with water. And this is the water that we can pump from wells. It’s the water that also –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– flows and supplies water to – to streams in – in this state. I’ll say it more than once here. It fills our lakes and such here too.

So, here’s a simple groundwater system. And, you know, we can complicate this – this sort of thing quite a bit. But the – the basics are – are all the same. We have water coming in from precipitation –

[slide titled, simple groundwater system, featuring a larger version of the illustration from the bottom of the previous slide featuring the cross-section of Earth between a stream and a lake – the stream is now labeled West Stream and the lake is now labeled East Stream]

– and we have it flowing through the subsurface and discharging to streams. So, in this case here, if this were Wisconsin, we’re getting about 32 inches of rain a year. It lands on the surface here. An inch or two might directly run off into a stream and – and leave a watershed that way. But the majority of it goes into the soil. Plants use quite a bit of it. About 22 inches a year – send it back up into the atmosphere, and if you’ve been doing the math here –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– that leaves about six inches, eight inches, 10 inches, depending where we are in the state, that seeps through the soil and becomes part of the – the groundwater, this blue zone over here.

Now, if groundwater just stayed still, we’d be in trouble. We’d be up to our eyeballs in it after a few years. But the fact is that groundwater moves. So, groundwater, once it’s in an aquifer, its sole purpose in life is to get the heck out of the aquifer –

[return to the simple groundwater system slide]

– and discharge to a water body, usually a – a stream but also, you know, some of our large lakes. Some Madison lakes, for instance, are groundwater discharge areas. Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Winnebago as – as well. So, here’s our simple groundwater flow system here. Now, audience participation question: if we had –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– a depression in the topography here, a hole of sorts, I’m thinking maybe 20, 40, 60 acres inside that goes below the water table, what would we call this thing? –

[return to the simple groundwater system slide now with a large square section of earth removed from the surface and filled with a dashed line full of water going below the water line]

[female audience member, off-camera]

A pond.

[George Kraft, off-camera]

A pond or a lake. Okay? And the point of this here is that we want to show that are streams are indeed oftentimes almost exclusively creatures of groundwater, but so are most of our lakes. And as the groundwater does, so do our lakes and so do our streams.

[new slide featuring two photos, one of two researchers wading in Emmons Creek and one of multicolored canoes and a couple on the beach of Sunset Lake]

And so, when we are in Wisconsin with a – a very nice reporter in a – a cold trout stream from the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, or we see many, many of the small lakes, well, mid and large lakes as well, in central Wisconsin, northern Wisconsin, we gotta be thinking groundwater. Groundwater is –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– keeping these things flowing. Groundwater is keeping these things filled. It’s a single resource.

So, let’s talk about, now, not just the natural system, but what happens when we pump –

[slide titled, Groundwater Pumping Basics]

– groundwater. And what I’m going to say about pumping isn’t to say that we should never pump groundwater. But what I’m saying is that there are – are tradeoffs, and there can come a point, like any resource, where we’re using too much –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– of it and we have consequences that we don’t want.

And so, there’s two big wheels that –

[slide featuring a photo of two large wheels from a large piece of equipment]

– control groundwater levels, I guess as well as lake levels and as well as stream flows. The one big wheel here is – is precipitation or – or weather. Wet years we get more groundwater recharge. We got higher – higher levels. We got more water in – in streams. Dryer years we go the other way. The other big wheel is groundwater pumping, and what groundwater pumping does, it takes the natural signal of ups and downs, and it brings it lower.

[George Kraft, on-camera]

Okay? So that’s what groundwater pumping does. It takes the natural signal of ups and downs and makes it lower.

So, if we take our little cartoon here –

[slide titled, No Pumping, showing the original groundwater illustrated cross-section]

– and now we put in a pumping well here –

[the lower half of the slide is now titled, With Pumping, showing a high-capacity pumping well located to the right almost to the East Stream, and showing a shift in the groundwater divide from the middle of the cross-section now to the west of the cross-section and the water table moving down about 2/3rds where the pump is located and also showing the pump drawing water from the East Stream]

– so, it says high capacity well, but it really means it can be any – any kind of -of a well. The first that you’ll probably notice is that this water here that was going to the east stream is getting intercepted by the high capacity well and taken someplace else. And so that water is being – is being deprived from the – of the stream. Now, if this well happens to be really close to the – to the stream and we’re pumping that well really hard, we can actually induce flow out of the stream and into that high capacity well and – and dry it directly.

The other thing that you’ll probably see here is note that the water table is substantially lower in the vicinity of the well due to the – due to the pumping that’s going on here. And, you know, a – a little appreciated fact is that when we put a new well in –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– and – and we pump the thing, it could take years, even if you’re only using it a part of the year and all that, before the incremental effects of pumping come to a new equilibrium, cause a new equilibrium with groundwater levels. Could be a number of years before that – that happens. A kind of a more subtle point here, you can see that there was a groundwater divide –

[return to the previous slide with the Pumping and No Pumping scenario illustrations]

– here where we didn’t have pumping where a bunch of water go to the west and a bunch of water goes to the east here. And the pumping of the high capacity well here is drawing water from the west watershed, if you will. We’re actually shifting the groundwater divide over. And so, a lot of people have a thought that while we’re pumping groundwater, we only have to worry about the streams or lakes that are down slope or down gradient of it, but the fact is – is that, you know, we can also have a broad area impacts –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– from a high capacity well after it goes in. So, subtle point and often is under appreciated.

So, this – you know, I’m big, being an Extension guy, on what –

[slide titled, For practical purposes, and the statement that – groundwater pumping always lowers water levels somewhere and diverts discharge from somewhere (usually streams)]

– kind of messages can you pretty much take to the bank and it’s going to be right 99% of the time. Groundwater pumping always lowers water levels somewhere, and it diverts discharge from somewhere. Usually it’s from – from streams, but, again, bigger lakes like that too.

[George Kraft, on-camera]

So, let’s do just a little overview of the pumping situation in – in Wisconsin. We have some 7,500 high-capacity –

[slide tilted, High-capacity wells, featuring a map of the state of Wisconsin with all the high-capacity wells in the state indicated by red dots with the majority of them being in the central part of the state]

– wells in the state. The red dots here are ones that have been put in since the year 2000. So, you can see that these are rapidly expanding; the – the numbers of these.

Most of the wells in the state are used for irrigation purposes. And it’s also where – virtually all the growth of – of new wells is for irrigation. You know, it’s funny. We don’t think about –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– ourselves as an irrigated state, but we’re rapidly going that direction.

Central Sands, then, is this area here. I would say the main body of the central sands covers parts or all of six counties. And – and we know what’s going on there pretty well.

[return to the High-capacity wells slide now with six areas of the state circled in red – two adjacent to one another in the north-west, one in the northeast part of the state, one in west-central, one in the south near Janesville, one in the Richland Center area. The Central Sands area is circled in yellow and is the area with the largest number of wells as well as a smaller yellow circle in Dane County]

We also know – because we have a lot of excellent hydrologists in this area – we also know pretty well what’s going on in – in Dane County and I – I – I suspect also in the southeastern part of the state. But there’s all these places in Wisconsin where we have lots of high-capacity wells that have been developed or are going in right now. We really don’t have a clue. We haven’t taken a look to see what the impacts are. And – and we should.

You know, for many, many, many –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– years getting a high-capacity well permit, or approvals they’re called, was easy as filling in the paperwork, paying a very modest fee. [claps] Wham-bam, you got the – you got the approval to put in a high-capacity well. And that approval was given whether or not you’re going to dry somebody’s well up, whether you’re going to dry a lake up, or whether you’re going to dry a stream up. It was an automatic. And it’s only been in the very last few years where we’ve been starting to take a look at the impacts of wells, particularly multiple wells, before these approvals get issued. And the state legislature seems very busy trying to overturn that modest amount of protection right now, and we’ll talk about that later.

So, let’s move –

[slide titled, Central Sands]

– along to the central sands. The Centrals Sands –

[new slide featuring a map of the counties that are part of the Central Sands along with an inset of the state to show where they are located in reference to the rest of the state]

– oh, were about, from north to south here, about 80 miles, and west to east, oh, maybe 50 miles. Something like that. You can see it’s a – a region that’s very rich in surface waters. There’s some 600 miles of stream. Many of them are – are trout streams. And, oh, at – at least a hundred lakes that are 25 acres or more. Then when you get to smaller kettle hole lakes and wetlands and that sort of thing, there’s a whole bunch more.

What makes the Central Sands the Central Sands is that –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– the glacial geology here is typically 100 to maybe 300 feet of sandy material over some less permeable bedrock. So, the aquifer for the region is – is mostly held in the – the sand deposit. And it’s something that’s very easy to pump and to get high volumes of – of water from.

The – the – the –

[return to the slide with the map of the counties of the Central Sands region, now with a new map to its right showing the water table for the Central Sands and showing most movement from the center outwards]

– part of the hydrology that drives the lakes and streams and everything else is the groundwater part. The underground part here. So, in the slide on the right-hand side here, these are the elevations of the – the groundwater table here. So, all over the central sands we have precipitation coming in, and it causes, just like we saw in that cartoon, it causes a –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– a rise in the water table, kind of in the middle. And we got a flow going to the west, and we got flow going to the east. Again, this water, its –

[return to the previous slide with the two maps]

– its sole purpose, get the heck out of the aquifer by the easiest means possible to – to a stream and leave the system. Along the way, many times it hits a depression, by golly we have a lake. And at the headwaters of these things, we have some phenomenal cold-water ecosystems, brook trout, you know? The – the – the magic thing here is, well, brown trout and the – the ecology that keeps all those things alive.

[new slide featuring an aerial photo of the Central Sands region of Wisconsin]

So, the Central Sands view from the air. In the middle, we have the main – main irrigated region here. It shows up quite apparent. To the west here, we have a mixture of – of dry land, woodland kind of agriculture, but some irrigated stuff sprinkled in. And to the east we have dry land agriculture, forest, and a – a mixture of irrigated land moving out there as well.

[new slide titled, A Little Central Sands Pumping History, with a bulleted list – 1930s – irrigation starts. Water from surface water and pits, Late 1950s – Surface water irrigation almost disappears due to public trust enforcement as well as the difficult permit system. Well drilling becomes more common, 1957-1959 – Heavy debate and discussion on water and groundwater pumping with much emphasis on irrigation]

Okay, so I’m – Im working on telling the story as kind of a – a – a chronological narrative. Let me see how I do here. So, 1930s already we – we have irrigation starting in the – in the Central Sands, but this is mostly from surface waters or from pits. You know? The way I picture this, and I – I talked to some farmer friends that say, “Yep, that’s about what it’s like.” You know, these are guys, because it’s mostly guys, finding old engines from a Model T or something like that, hooking up to a pump and distributing water over fields that were pretty close to – to streams, or pits that were shallow enough to groundwater –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– you could – you could pump out of there.

This proliferated through the ’30s and ’40s, and by that time there – there was a lot of conflict because farmers were drying up streams by directly pumping water out – out of them. And people were kind of getting ticked off that their, you know, their stream is dry, theres – fish are dead, and that kind of thing. The Attorney General’s office worked aggressively at that time. Saying, you know, it was a violation [smacks hands together] of the public trust doctrine for water management in Wisconsin. You can’t do that. So, they instituted a permitting process. They kicked, you know, a bunch of people out of – of –

[return to the A Little Central Sands Pumping History slide with the bulleted list]

– pumping from the – the – the streams.

And then we get into the 1950s here. The surface water irrigation almost entirely disappeared, and there were a couple of new technological developments here. First in well drilling, and secondly in, you know, these – these machines that can irrigate large acreages by spinning around in – in a circle, you know? We learned how to fabricate aluminum in World War II, and this is one post-war use of it.

[George Kraft, on-camera]

So, there’s a bunch of – of wells going in. And then in ’57-’59, lots of debate and discussion on water and groundwater pumping and that sort of thing. And by the way, for those of you that are historian kind of folks, when you go back and look at how well these issues were discussed, both in the legislature and in the – the Milwaukee Journal of the – the day, this was covered very closely. It’s the wonderful kind of journalism that, you know, we – we don’t have the resources to see anymore, I’m afraid.

So, okay, ’57 to ’59 we have, you know –

[slide titled, 1950s – Groundwater Pumping Law Debated, featuring two quotes, The first from V.J. Muench of the Isaac Walton League in 1950 – The public will not stand for the destruction of streams We have the water now, but what will we have if we pump it out at a faster rate?, and the second from the Wisconsin Ag Water Conservation Committee in 1959 – No reasonable person is concerned about this [This is] an area of unlimited water. Much information, vital to writing a new, workable water code, is lacking]

– things coming to a head. And here’s two bookends, I think, for the groundwater discussion. One of them, you know, advocating a go-slow approach. We don’t know what’s going on here. Let’s take it slow. These were the conservationists of the day that were suggesting – they weren’t asking for anything that onerous. They said, Hey, you know, let’s issue permits and keep an eye on things, you know, measuring stream flows and that sort of thing. If we have unintended consequences, we’ll slow this thing down. And – and then this was the – the other side of the discussion here. Actually, the – the people on this Ag Water Conservation Committee, you know, a lot of them are still around today, although much, much aged here. But we still see these same arguments. Wait a second, no reasonable person cares about this.

[George Kraft, on-camera]

This isn’t an issue. There’s all kinds of water here. What are you talking about? And, you know, We just don’t have the information. We need another study or something, right? And we still hear echoes of – of this today. I mean, you know, this is like the cigarette debate. Remember 1950 already, you know, we knew cigarettes caused cancer, and, you know, it took us decades, you know, before we reached that tipping point where we did something about it. Point being here that we got to 1959, go to the legislature, ask them for a groundwater management bill, which we could have had at that time. They were convinced, “No, we don’t – we dont want to go in this direction.” Okay. And then we didn’t do anything with groundwater – I got to check my math here. But getting on 45-50 years.

So, you know, in that time –

[slide titled, 1950 2 High-Capacity Wells, with a map of the Central Sands region noting the location of the 2 wells along with an inset map of Wisconsin showing the Central Sands location in relation to the rest of the state]

– 1950, we had two high-capacity wells.

[slide animates to a new slide titled, 1960, 97 High-Capacity Wells, with the same map now showing the locations of the wells in the area in 1960]

1960 we were – we were getting close to 100.

[new slide titled, 1965 – Little Plover Study by Weeks et. al., featuring a photo of the Little Plover River and a photo of the cover of the study paper in orange with the title – Hydrology of the Little Plover River Basin, Portage County, Wisconsin and the Effects of Water Resource Development]

Well, now some scientific things are starting to happen in parallel here. So, the Little Plover River is said to be the most studied stream in the country. And I don’t know that for a fact, but I’ve added to that pile of research. My good friend Ken Bradbury, you know, is completing –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– another study on that where, you know, we’ve been reploughing some old ground and adding to some things. But this was a guy named Ed Weeks did this, released this study in 1965. And this is a famous U.S.G.S. kind of – kind of a guy. It must have been when he was still cutting his teeth. And – and he showed the – the groundwater/surface water –

[return to the previous slide with the photo of the cover of the survey]

– connections here. He mapped groundwater flow in the area. He measured the – the stream as it picked up groundwater flow along its route. He did an experiment where he put a high-capacity well right next to the stream, turned it on, and intentionally dried up the stream. And then he also did calculations that said, Well, if irrigation gets to this point, we’re going to be missing this much stream flow. If it gets to this point, we’ll be missing this much more kind of stream flow. So, he – he did this kind of calculation. Are there any hydrologists here that saw the famous- famous film that was made of this research? Yeah, I figured.

[George Kraft, on-camera]

[laughter]

So, there was a film made of – of this back in the day that, you know –

[return to the slide featuring the photo of the cover of the Little Plover survey]

– all budding hydrologists have had to see – from – from my era – to, you know, make your education complete. Anyway so, you know, this was some of the good science that was done –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– in the evolution. Another canary in the coal mine maybe that we ignored.

So, we get to 1970 –

[slide tilted, 1970 497 High-Capacity Wells, featuring the same map as before now showing the locations of the wells in the Central Sands area in 1970]

– and we’re getting close to 500 wells by this time, which, if you remember, is about a fivefold increase.

[new slide tilted, 1971 – Ed Weeks and H.G. Stangland, featuring the cover of a survey done by the aforementioned titled – Effects of Irrigation in the Central Sand Plain of Wisconsin]

Ed Weeks was at it again with some other accomplices here. But he started studying the – the – the broader picture in the Central Sands. The wells that were going in and what he was expecting to see –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– in terms of impacts on surface water.

So, he actually measured at – at different locations. When the wells would go on, the stream flows went down. He measured water levels going down, and then he started making some predictions. You know, when the landscape has X percent of the – X percent in irrigated land use, we’ll expect to see water levels down by, you know, Y amount and this much less water in streams.

The studies, the work that he did here could have served as the basis for a groundwater management plan. I mean, they were – instead of doing this stuff with computers, you know, they were doing it with slide rules and pencils and graph paper. But he put out a perfectly good strategy back here in 1971 and tools for managing groundwater way back then.

So – oh, and, you know –

[return to the previous slide featuring the Effects of Irrigation on Streamflow study, now with a quote from the study highlighted – Degradation of fish and wildlife habitats, drainage of extensive wetland environments, and regional declines in groundwater levels and streamflows are some of the major potential impacts needing immediate investigation.]

– and this was Weeks warning here. Basically, be careful. You know? Keep this thing managed and maybe you can have the – the best of both worlds.

[new slide featuring a map of a part of the area that Weeks et. al. was studying as mapped in 1964 of a string of lakes east of Plainfield Wisconsin]

This is east of Plainfield, and this was part of the area that Ed – Ed Weeks was studying here. So, there’s this series of lakes and wetlands that go east of Plainfield. So, the freeway actually is on the far-left side here. And this would be maybe five miles east of there. And –

[new slide animates on with a close-up view of the lakes on the previous map]

– let me take a close look here. And so, you can see a – a few of the lakes here. The upper left here, you can see there’s a Plainfield Lake, and if you can make out this writing, and maybe you can’t here, but that’s a 10-foot contour. It’s probably 12 feet at the maximum. Here is the famous Long Lake here, which, you know, had a reported depth by D.N.R. of 14 feet here. And you can see we have some shallow lakes here, and probably things that were wetlands part of the time, lakes another time. A deep lake here called Lake Huron that, you know, might have been 40 or – or – or 50 feet deep. And we’re going to come back to this guy in a little bit.

[return to the 1970 – 497 High-Capacity Wells slide featuring the locations of all the wells in the Central Sands area in 1970 now with the area of the Little Plover River circled in blue (in the northwest area of the Sands) and the area of the Plainfield and other lakes circled in red (in the central area of the Sands]

But here’s the Little Plover, and now here’s those Plainfield lakes here. We went from the 500 high-capacity wells –

[slide animates the same map now titled, 1980 1,053 High-Capacity Wells, and showing the location of the wells on the map in 1980]

– to, 1980, we’ve – weve cracked a thousand.

[slide animates on the same map now titled, 1990 1,417 High-Capacity Wells, and now showing the location of all the Sands wells in 1990]

1990, we got 1400.

[slide animates on the same map now titled, 2000 1,757 High-Capacity Wells, and now showing the location of all the wells in the Sands in 2000]

2000, we’re up over 1700. And then –

[new slide featuring an aerial photo of the Plainfield area in 2006]

– come middle of 2000s here, and we have problems. I don’t know if you can see from here, but, you know, it looks like this thing has been hallowed out. That, you know, the landscape has been partially de-watered here. When I mean de-watered, I mean we’re lowering the water table here. Let’s take a close look –

[slide animates on a new aerial photo of the lake areas that were part of the previous maps and showing a decrease in water levels for all the lakes at best and at worst the lakes have devolved to wetlands]

– a close-up look at it. So, here we have that – that Plainfield Lake, which was, what, a dozen or – or so feet deep in – in that U.S.G.S. map. You know, it’s completely toast. It’s turned into a wetland. This year, in Long Lake, you know, it – it- it’s very low. And this a lake that was a trophy bass lake, and my Assembly person says, “Huh, I used to water ski there when I was a – a kid.” And you can see the, you know, things that were shallow lakes have gone dry, wetlands have gone dry, you know, other lakes have turned to wetlands, and the deep – the deep lakes have just gotten a whole bunch more extra shoreline.

[new slide featuring a photo of Long Lake and showing the increased shoreline and diminished water levels]

So, here’s – heres some pictures of that. You know, point being, by the mid-2000s here, you know, we – we – we had this slow-motion accident here where, [claps his hands] bam, we hit the wall –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– and now it’s undeniable that – that we have issues here. So, this is that Long Lake Oasis. This was all taken by a guy who bought his place there –

[return to the previous slide with the photo of Long Lake]

– like in 2004, and in the next two, three years he had a dry lake.

[new slide with a photo of Long Lake in the late 2000s showing that the lake had disappeared and is now wetlands]

2000 – this is 2005 or 2006. So, it’s turned into wetland. The fish are toast by this time. Sure as heck, you can’t water ski there, right?

[laughter]

[new slide showing Long Lake in the year 2008 where there is no longer water in the area and the lake has turned into a meadow]

This is about 2008 here. And, you know, the thing has turned into a meadow. I was there the other day, and it’s the highest I’ve seen it in – in a dozen years there. But, you know, I’m thinking there’s about this much water in there right now.

[George Kraft, on-camera indicating a height of about a foot with his hand]

I don’t – you know, you could barely float a – a – a boat in there besides a – a – a canoe. But I don’t think we’re going to have any fish there any – any time too soon. It’s just a very wet year. We had 40 inches of rain last year.

Little Plover –

[slide titled, Little Plover – dried in stretches 2005-2009; below Public Rights Stage most of the time, featuring six photos of the Little Plover River, four of which show a dried up river bed and two of which show very little water with dead fish in the river basin]

– you know, this – this stream that was well investigated, not only by Weeks but also by fisheries, biologists, in terms of why it was such a productive trout fishery here. It went dry every year from 2005 to 2009, and mostly flows what’s below the Public Rights flow. Think about that as a healthy flow most of the time since then.

[new slide featuring a photo of Pickerel Lake in Portage County showing reduced water levels]

This was Pickerel Lake in Portage County here. This is standing on the boat landing with now it’s about 80 feet from the water. There’s a – each – each of these lakes has a story, and – and the reason I’m showing one after another is that there’s a sense among some of the stakeholder groups that, It’s the Little Plover River and it’s the Long Lake, we fix those two things, we’re all good. No. This is – this is dozens of water bodies. Okay?

[George Kraft, on-camera]

You know, there’s the story here is that there’s a camp for indigent children over here, and they’re losing their waterfront. The lake fish kills more often than it did.

[slide titled, Wolf Lake, showing a photo of the shoreline of Wolf Lake with low water levels]

Wolf Lake, you know, this is where Portage County has a park. On a typical Saturday or Sunday, there would be families, you know, 100 people there. 150 people at – at any one time using the beach area. Water level has fallen to – so much now that, you know, there’s no sandy material.

[George Kraft, on-camera]

You go off the edge, and you’re down in the books. Nobody brings their kid down there anymore. So, we’ve lost that. It hasn’t been usable since – for 14 years, according to the parks director.

[slide titled, Pine Lake Waushara County, featuring a photo of a long dock that no longer extends to the watery area of Pine Lake]

A dock to nowhere here on Pine Lake near Hancock.

[new slide titled, Stoltenberg Creek, Portage County, featuring a photo of a dried creek bed]

Another creek that’s gone dry.

[new slide featuring three photos, one of Plainfield Lake, Waushara County, one of Pumpkin Seed Lake in Waushara County, and one of Washburn Lake in Waushara County, all of which are now wetlands instead of lakes]

You get the idea. You know –

[new slide titled, Patrick Lake in Adams County, featuring a photo of said lake that is now in an in-between state between a lake and wetlands]

– this is a lot of water bodies that are involved here.

[new slide titled, Ten Mile Creek at Harding, Waushara County, featuring a photo of the dried creek bed where the creek once was]

[new slide featuring a photo of three groundwater pumping studies done by Mr. Kraft]

So, this is kind of where I come into the picture. Actually, it’s just before the disasters. You know, I’m an Extension hydrologist –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– and some people in lake groups say, you know, We’re worried about all these wells going in and – and our water levels going down. What do you think? I was kind of on the fence for a little bit, you know? But then we – we did have the catastrophic dry ups, and my team and I did a number of studies on this. You know, peer reviewed, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. You know, to which added to the – to the pile are Dr. Bradbury’s [claps] recent report that should be coming out here in a month or two. And you – you know, a graduate student’s work where, you know, she reviewed all the data for the last umpteenth centuries on the area – area and published that as – as well. So, you know, among scientists, this is – this is quite well accepted stuff.

So, you know –

[slide titled, Maybe this is normal , asking the question – What do water level and streamflow records look like for these impacted waters?]

– what does a scientist ask himself when confronted like this? Well, maybe this is normal, you know? And so, what do you do? Do you have stream flow records? Do you have water level records for these impacted water bodies? What do we have that we can look at? Actually, I was thinking there’s probably people here that have careers in, I don’t know, biochemistry and gene jockey stuff and all that stuff. Hydrologists, you know – and you got all kind of cool toys.

[George Kraft, on-camera]

Hydrologists have two things. We have – we have statistics and conservation of mass, you know? That’s our two big things. Okay, we do some fancy things with satellites and – and the like, but, you know, basically, we rely on conservation of mass and statistics to kind of do our hydrology, particularly forensic hydrology.

So, you know, we went looking for some records here. These things are pretty sparse, but there’s enough of them here. So, here’s a Plover monitoring well here. And you go, Wow, okay.

[slide titled, Plover Monitoring Well, featuring a graph with the year on the x-axis and water elevation on the y-axis and showing what appears to be precipitational differences in the years up to the late 1990s and then a sharp decrease in the early 2000s. The graph also has a red line showing the water elevation decrease over time. Additionally, there is an inset aerial photo showing the location of the well]

This is really something here. It’s in a heavily irrigated area. And look what it’s been doing now for a few decades. Just nobody was paying attention to the – to the record here. It was up on U.S.G.S. site. And, you know, one of the four, five, six monitor – long-term monitoring wells we have in the Sands, we don’t have a tremendously long – long record. But, holy cow, this turned out to be valuable.

So, wow, okay. But fortunately for us –

[slide titled, Little Plover Flow (1959-1986), featuring a U.S.G.S graph of the flow of the Little Plover with the year on the x-axis and the daily discharge on the y-axis]

– because stakeholders say, “Ah, Little Plover dries up all the time.” Okay. The U.S.G.S. was monitoring the Little Plover River continuously from 1959 to 1986, which included some of the driest years of the previous century here. And you can see the water level is bounce – bouncing up and down. Don’t worry about the exact numbers here. But you can see this says 10. 10 cubic feet per second was about the average here. And you look at what we had in those more recent times here when we’re having these dry spells.

[George Kraft, on-camera]

And it would plot below the – the – hey, this is the exact meaning of off the charts, right?

[laughter]

It – it plots below the minimum of this – this chart here for a – a good chunk of the time. So, its okay.

[return to the previous slide with the U.S.G.S. graph which now has red dashes under some years that are marked Modern Era Lows]

You look at this Plover data, a couple other water levels, this Little Plover stuff as well, and, you know, it’s looking something normal isn’t going on right here.

[new slide titled, OK then, with the question – Maybe were in a record drought?]

So, you know, okay. And there’s assertions. We’re in a record drought. Hmm, how about that?

[new slide featuring two graphs, one labeled, Stevens Point Annual Precipitation 1931-2014 that plots precipitation (y-axis) over time (x-axis) and the second labeled Hancock Annual Precipitation 1930-2014 with the same x an y axis plots]

Then we started looking at precipitation records and looking at how precipitation used to be –

[slide animates on a red circle over the data for the years 1950 to 1980 for both graphs]

– and what it is in the current time here. So, you know, we’ve had very dry times in central Wisconsin, and maybe more of Wisconsin –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– from about 1946 to either the mid-’60s, mid-’70s, however you want to cut it. During this whole time, compared to the average, we were getting two inches a year blow average, on average, versus the current time right now. In the last couple of decades, we’ve been getting inch, inch-and-a-half more precipitation –

[return to the previous slide with the two precipitation graphs now with the years 1990-2014 circled with a black circle]

– than average here. So, you know, these – these dry spells that we have in the more modern area compared to the past here, you know, this is – this is peanuts. We – we can’t blame this on any kind of a record drought. Okay.

[new slide posing the question – How is water doing in areas with fewer high-capacity wells?]

And other analyses were going on. Is there something else with climate change and – and more sophisticated kind of stuff? And no, we can’t pin this on climate change. The climate change has gotten wetter.

So, now we can say let’s go to areas where we don’t have a lot of high-capacity wells here. See what’s going on there.

[slide animates on a graph titled, Wautoma (few high-capacity wells), with the year on the x-axis and Wautoma Depth of Water on the y-axis showing precipitation-based differences in water depth but overall steady or slightly increased water depths over time]

So, this is one of the – another one of the monitoring wells that we have. This is by Wautoma where there’s some groundwater pumping, some irrigation, but not a lot. And you can see we go from this very dry period here of – of the ’50s. We see as precipitation increased, water levels went up, and then they kind of just go bouncing up and down. And we can see this in a couple other records as – as well –

[slide animates on a dotted blue line indicating an overall increase in water levels]

– that this is what water levels did.

[new slide titled, Compare – areas of many and few high-capacity wells, with the Wautoma and Hancock graphs superimposed on one another]

So, now let’s compare this with the place where there’s many high-capacity wells. And this is one at Hancock. It’s at the field station that you drive by on the – on the freeway here. Well, look at this. Wham! You know? We see this – this plummeting of water levels here. And actually, this becomes the basis, the comparison of these kinds of records, the Hancock one, with another location maybe, you know, 10 miles away or getting more or less the same kind of weather, where we can start to make calculations of how much missing water there – there is. And we use that extensively.

[slide titled, Stressed Lakes, featuring an inset photo of a water deprived Huron Lake along with a graph showing the Huron Lake Water Elevation on the y-axis with the year on the x-axis and showing a dramatic decrease in water elevation from the 1990s to the 2010s]

We can see the lake record is more sparse in terms of how often they measured lake levels. But a lot of times we could see the same kind of pattern, that the lake was bouncing up and down, and then bam, the last 25-30 years we get this steep kind of drop off.

[new slide titled Groundwater flow modeling, featuring a bullet list, does the pumping hypothesis hang together? – Estimate irrigation water consumption, filling in the blanks between observation points, projecting futures, along with a map of the Central Sands region]

The other tool that – that we employed here is groundwater flow modeling. Groundwater flow modeling is the 20th century. I didn’t say 21st. But, you know, was something already that we were using extensively in the 20 – 20th century. We’ve gotten a lot better at it.

To – to figure out the ins and outs of an aquifer here. So, we used the groundwater flow modeling extensively. We used it, first of all, to see if a pumping hypothesis –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– is – is hanging together. So, we could dispense with other kind of causes, like record drought and all these kind of – kind of things. We still want to see: can a pumping effect be – be – be reasonably explained on our observations here? But beyond that, we – we use the model to do a few more things. Estimate irrigation water consumption –

[return to the previous Groundwater flow modeling slide]

– fill in blanks among observation points. You know, we – we have maybe 20, 30 observation points on the network. What’s going on between those things? And perhaps most importantly here, projecting futures.

[slide featuring a map of the upper Central Sand region with three modeling scenarios indicated by various lines drawn on the map for each scenario – red = constant head, orange = drain, and green = river]

Here’s a groundwater flow model kind of looks like. And what it does – we let the recharge come – come in, and this is divided up in all kind of little tiny cells and we do little algebraic equations in each cell. And the groundwater flow model mathematically routes the water to these streams. And while it’s doing so, it keeps us a conservation of mass, how much water in versus water out, and it also tells us –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– how high the water levels are in the aquifer.

So –

[slide titled, Water Level Decline from Pumping (around year 2000), featuring two maps – on of the Central Sands area indicating all the high-capacity wells in the area, and a second color keyed map showing the drawdown of water in feet for the region with the central areas having the most drawdown]

– long story short, by golly, we could explain the – the impact that we were seeing at our known observation points with a – a modest amount of water consumption on irrigated fields. Like two inches, which is what the biophysicists say, you know, is in the ballpark of what they think the – the net consumptive use of – of irrigation is. Now, this drawing here is the drawdown map here. So, it’s how much did the water table [blows] come down like – like this here.

Water table always comes – it doesn’t come down much close to streams. It comes down the – the most the furthest you are away from streams. And you see we have the – the border – border between Portage and Waushara Counties is where we have the most drawdown here. We very conservatively estimate it because you don’t want to overestimate in this business. That, you know, the maximum was in – in this region, and we’re talking three, four, five feet. The reality is probably seven or eight, so and so. But anywhere within this yellow region here you could see noticeable changes in the – the lakes. Not that they necessarily all dried up or something –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– but you see the trees are way up here and the water level is way down there, you know? And boathouses are way up there, and water’s way down here. So, anything kind of within the – the yellow here we’ve had substantial drawdown.

[return to the Water Level Decline from Pumping slide with the drawdown map]

Now, with these – with the groundwater flow model, it’s – its harder to illustrate compared to drawdown map like this, but we can – we can estimate how much water is missing in streams.

[new slide, titled, Percent Less Average Flow in Stream Headwaters (around the year 2000), featuring two maps – one a cell-by-cell groundwater flow model map of the Sands with a color code for percentage less flow (green = less than 2%, orange = 2-5%, red=5-10%, and black over 10%) – a lot of the western and eastern edges are green, while the interior is mostly red and black, the second map shows cumulative loss at 2Km with a different key (green=less than 2%, orange=2-10%, red=10-30%, and black=30-44%) and observation sites indicted by dots the color of the key – most dots are red or black]

So, just to pick out a – a few here. A black dot means it’s missing 30% to 44% in the headwaters. A red dot is 10% to 30%. Biologists say Yeah, 10% is about the hit you can take without harming a stream too much. So, you know, were – we’re able to make this kind of connection as well.

[new slide titled, The Present]

So, let’s talk about where we are –

[new slide titled, 2010 2,029 High-Capacity Wells, with the now familiar map of the Central Sands area with dots indicating the locations of all the high-capacity wells in the area in 2010 and including the inset map of Wisconsin to show the location of the Central Sands in relation to the rest of the state]

– in – in the present here. So, we – we’ve had more wells come in. So, we’ve cracked 2,000 in 2010.

[slide animates on the same map now titled, 2013 2,205 High-Capacity Wells, with dots indicating the location of high-capacity wells in the Sands in 2013]

2,200 in 2013. You figure there’s probably another 50 or 100 in the area. And, you know, again, most of these were done – put in without any kind of environmental analysis here.

[slide animates to a new map of the area similar to the previous maps but now showing newly completed wells from 2000-2009 in yellow and those newly completed from 2010-2015 in red as well as replacement wells indicated in black]

You see how they’re going here. The red is the ones that have been put in the last five or six years. So, we’re kind of moving the development of irrigation to the flanks of the original irrigated area here. So, we can expect that we’re impacting more lakes and –

[new slide titled, 2013 Central Sands High-Capacity Well Pumpage – 74 Billion Gallons, showing a bar graph of usage for the water that is pumped from the well on the x-axis and the percentage on the y-axis and showing over 80% of water being used for irrigation, while Public, Industry, Other Agriculture, and Other are all less than 10%]

– and more streams. Central Sands, we’ve pumped 74 billion gallons of water a year. 2013 being probably a typical year. You know, when people say, Well, let’s put bricks in toilets and things like that, it’s like, Okay, come on. 85% of the water use is irrigation. That’s the thing we have to deal with here, you know? Its – its – a brick in a toilet is not going to help us very much.

[laughter]

[new slide titled, Top Groundwater Pumping Counties in 2013, featuring a list of counties in the state and the number of gallons that they pump with 1-3 being Central Sands counties Portage (27 billion), Adams (20 billion), and Waushara (19 billon) counties respectively which is 25% of the total – the rest are Dane (18 billion), Dunn (10 billion), Rock (9 billion), Marathon (6 billion), Waukesha (7 billion), LaCrosse (7 billion), and Sauk (6 billion)]

These three counties, the Central Sands counties, pumped a quarter of all groundwater that was pumped in Wisconsin in 2013. Dane sometimes flips in there and bumps Waushara out once in a while, so – particularly wet years.

[new slide titled, Central Sands Irrigated Crop Water Use 2012, featuring a pie chart of all the agricultural crops that are irrigated with the wells in the Central Sands and noting that (Feed) Corn (39.3%), potatoes (21.3%), and Sweet Corn (10.5%) are the top three recipients of well irrigation]

And this is what we – I – I wonder if you’re going to find this interesting. This is what we use that irrigation water for. So, you always hear about potatoes, you know. Potatoes need a lot of water and all this. But look what the – the largest irrigated crop is, you know? It – it – it’s corn, you know? You know the statistics on it. 40% for ethanol, 40% of animal feed, 20% for high fructose corn syrup, right? I – I don’t know. But it’s – its an eye opener to see what the water is actually used for.

[new slide titled, The Future, featuring a previous slide that had the drawdown map and the map of the wells in the region – on the drawdown map an area in the north is circled]

Now let’s move into the future here a little bit in our remaining time. And the future here, we’re not done yet, right? You know, we haven’t shut down growth of high-capacity wells, and we’re seeing that we’re getting more growth on the flanks of the Central Sands. So, I picked this region right here. On this map here, you can see it’s right in here [indicating on the map of the wells an area where there are not many wells] where we don’t have too many high-capacity wells. And so, what – what might this look like in the future? So, I’m kind of being like a junior Ed Weeks here, you know? Like what he did in 1971 –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– looking at what’s going on in Plainfield, I’m looking up here what’s going on in the Tomorrow River Watershed. Amherst/Nelsonville, if you know the area. So, this is what we did. You know, right now there’s a 113 –

[slide titled, Now 113 wells, 11,700 acres, featuring an enlarged map of the area that was circled on the drawdown map and indicating the wells in that region with black dots]

– high – high-capacity wells for irrigation and 11,700 acres. Actually, this has grown some since that time, including the – the high-cap well that I have in front of my house. And we – we said, Where are the soils good enough and the land’s flat enough and there’s not too many boulders and things where we might be getting additional irrigated land development here?

[new slide animates on to the right of the Now slide, labeled Future – 465 wells, 48,174 acres, and featuring the same map now with future areas for wells indicated by red dots]

And when we took a look at this, it was like, Holy cow, you know? We could easily quadruple what we have today. I’m not saying it’s going to happen tomorrow or in the next five or 10 years, but just like, you know, Weeks did that study in 1970 and all the sudden we fast forward to the mid-2000s in having these things. You know, we – we could be at 400 and some high-capacity wells and near 50,000 acres in – in this area here.

So, then we can do – okay, this is what groundwater flow models are for. What’s the projection of –

[new slide featuring two more maps of the area in question, one labeled, Drawdown of select lakes with various lakes indicated and a measure in feet of how much less water they may have, and a second map labeled, Depletion of select streams, with various streams indicated and a measure in feet of how much less water these streams may have as a percentage of their current waterflow]

– of what’s going to happen here? So, you know, here on the left side are the drawdowns of – of certain lakes here. So, as long as we were talking about county parks before, here’s a favorite county park in Portage County, Sunset, and we might be two to four feet lower over there. These are no parks here, but, you know, a lot of people have residences and fishing and things. You know, three to six feet is what we might be looking at. This poor lake here, which is already impacted, you know, could be 3.8 to 7.9 feet. Another county park here, you know, two to 4.5 feet might be missing. Okay? So, you know, these aren’t minor kind of impacts, and if we’re – were talking wetlands here, you know, forget it. They’re going to be toast.

Now we can look at depletion of some streams here too. The red circles are the main steam of the Tomorrow. Anybody kayak or fish the Tomorrow? Do so. I – I think you’ll really – I think you’ll really enjoy it. It’s a great kayak. But, you know, the – the main stem here, you know, at this point here in Nelsonville, 14% to 28% missing, 9% to 18%, 11% to 23% is how we capture that. The tribs [tributaries] really get hit hard here. You know, 44% to 90%. Well, okay, that’s just about completely gone, that – that little bugger here too. So, point being, you know, we – we need to think about how –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– we’re managing our – our water.

So, you may or may not be aware that there’s kind of a – is it a quiet water war going on?

[slide titled, A Quiet Water War is Going On]

Well, a water war anyway.

[new slide titled, Pre-2011 Wisconsin de facto Pumping Policy, featuring a quote – Pretty much, anyone can pump the groundwater they want and individually or cumulatively dry up any lake or stream or wetland]

Let’s see how we got into this. So, before 2011, this is – again, I’m an Extension guy, I like to make the message special. And I don’t talk about the easy to remember, and I don’t talk about the 1% or 2% things. But pretty much before 2011 anyone can pump all the groundwater they want and, individually or with a whole bunch of other pumpers, dry up any lake or stream or wetland that they want to. Okay. 2011 there’s a case that went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court told the Department of Natural Resources, Hey, look, you have a public trust, constitutional obligation.

[George Kraft, on-camera]

When somebody tells you that a high-capacity well is going to harm a water body, you have to look at it. The Department of Natural Resources minimized that at the time, said, We’re only going to look at these things one at a time here. So, if there’s 20 wells that have already taken a water level down this much [indicates with his hand about 2 feet], which was exactly the case in – in – in this – in another court case that went forward, and there’s a couple of more wells proposed that’ll take it down this much more, the Department of Natural Resources says, Well, it’s only this much more. [indicating with his hand about an inch] You get your permit and go on. So, there – there was a legal proceeding on that because, you know, this much more [indicating another inch], this much more [indicating another inch on top of the previous inch], this much more [indicating another inch on top of the previous inch], this much more [indicating another inch on top of the previous inch], you have a dry lake. And the hearing examiner said, No, D.N.R., you have to look at the cumulative effects here too.

So, since that time in – in the legislature, there’s been action to minimize or overturn those – those legal proceedings here. And pretty much go back to Wild West days here.

[slide titled, 2015-16 Legislative Proposals, featuring a bulleted list of proposals – SB 239 – Permanent right of public water to high-capacity well owners without respect to lake or stream harms. SB 291 – Permanent water right, rolls back protections and allows multiple wells to pump any lake or stream dry, and sets up a possibly insurmountable political process to fix regions where pumping has dried lakes and streams]

Two things that came out in the last session here. SB239, which would very unusually say anybody has a high capacity well, you get a forever approval, which basically is privatizing the public water here in an – in an odd sort of way. We – we haven’t done that before in Wisconsin.

This other bill went further. It gave a permanent water right, but it rolled back all these protections from cumulative impacts and multiple wells. So, we’re basically going to go back to the Wild West days. The other thing that was curious about this, they set up this kind of politically insurmountable process where the legislature could designate an area and it would get studied and then perhaps, you know, there would be some action taken to ratchet back the pumping in there. So, it was sort of like, you know –

[George Kraft, on-camera]

– while you’re trying to fill in one hole, we’re going to be digging a lot more holes and creating more problems probably faster than we’re going to be fixing them.

Right now, you may be aware – Oops, I didn’t want to do that, but that’s okay. You – you may be aware that the legislature asked the Attorney General’s office to see if actions that happened after the Supreme Court ruling prohibit the Department of Natural Resources from doing any more well reviews based on environmental impact. And so, the legislature passed a – a statutory change that said, Hey, if the legislature doesn’t tell a state agency explicitly to do this or to do that, assume you can’t. And since kind of that came through the courts, D.N.R., you can’t do that because we already prohibited you from doing those things. So, we’ll see where that Attorney General’s opinion goes, what the Department of Natural Resources decides to do with it. And I, you know, I think lake groups and river groups are back to having bake sales and that sort of thing to raise legal funds to – to push back in – in the courts. So, it should be an interesting time.

That’s all my prepared remarks. Tom, I could take a few questions.

[Tom Zinnen]

That’d be great.

[applause]