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Managing water withdrawals and protecting subwatershed water budgets
About the new Buzzards Bay CCMP Action PlansThe Buzzards Bay NEP is now updating our 1992 landmark Buzzards Bay Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) to reflect the great progress achieved since that plan was finalized. It will include new goals, objectives, and recommendations to meet the environmental needs for Buzzards Bay and its surrounding watershed into the next decade of the 21st century. This new document will also meet the requirements for a Massachusetts Watershed Action Plan, which will enable new funding opportunities through the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
On this page is a draft action plan from the updated Buzzards Bay Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan and planned 2009-2014 Watershed Action Plan. The text on this page is a public draft provided to invite comment and discussion of the subject by residents and stakeholders. It may contain goals and recommendations that have not yet been endorsed or approved by the Buzzards Bay Steering Committee. The views or information contained here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or the US Environmental Protection Agency.
We want your feedback on this action plan. At the bottom of this page is a link for you to provide comments on each goal, objective and recommendation contained in this Action Plan. Based on your feedback, we will update and revise all the action plans in the new CCMP.
Action Plan 12*: Managing water withdrawals to protect wetlands, habitat, and public water supplies
To fully understand the basis of these goals and recommendations, please read (left click) or download (right click) the complete Managing Water Withdrawals Action Plan (July 2008 draft 2.7 MB pdf).July 2008 draft
Goals
Goal 1. Protect and preserve groundwater and surface water supplies in order to ensure a sustainable supply of high quality drinking water.Goal 2. Protect and restore the natural flows of our rivers and the natural waters of our ponds, lakes, and wetlands and the habitat that depend on them.
Goal 3. Maintain natural hydrology.
Goal 4. Keep water use local to the subwatershed level.
Goal 5. Protect and preserve saline, estuarine, and brackish surface water habitats.
The Mattapoisett River went dry in September 1999 and again in October 2007. There is concern that increasing withdrawals in the Mattapoisett River will result in the river running dry more frequently destroying important fish habitat and disrupting the late summer early fall migration of juvenile herring in their return the ocean.
Objectives
Objective 1. Encourage water use conservation to increase efficiency and to minimize water withdrawals, system losses, and associated impacts.Objective 2. Encourage water reuse for irrigation, industrial process water, and other non-potable uses within public health constraints.
Objective 3. Encourage LID techniques for enhanced stormwater recharge to maximize groundwater recharge and help mitigate impacts from water withdrawals.
Objective 4. Manage water withdrawals and wastewater discharges to help maintain recharge to the aquifer so that they do not adversely affect water resources, wetlands, or private wells.
Objective 5. Manage all withdrawals in a subwatershed equally (public or private).
Objective 6. Limit non-essential water use during drought periods.
Objective 7. Develop new water supplies to provide distribution system redundancy, flexibility and optimization.
Objective 8. Identify and protect open space for future water supplies, when needed, located as far from significant surface water resources as is hydrogeologically possible in order to minimize potential impacts on natural water resources.
Objective 9. Incorporate new information, when available, from ongoing or planned state studies on water budgets and sustainable yields into water resources planning and regulation.
Objective 10. Encourage accurate tracking of water use by agricultural users and the practice of BMP's for water conservation.
Objective 11. If and when desalinization occupies a water supply role in the watershed, encourage control technologies and operational measures that minimize entrainment and impingement impacts at intakes and preserve the natural salinity structure of receiving water bodies at outlets.
Recommendations
Recommendation 12.1 Petition state agencies to reevaluate the stress classification of priority subwatersheds within the Buzzards Bay watershed.Recommendation 12.2 Work with municipalities to ensure that water use restrictions are applied uniformly throughout the watershed in response to tangible climatic/hydrologic conditions.
Recommendation 12.3 The United States Geological Survey (USGS) should install continuous stream monitoring stations o the Weweantic, Wankinco, and Mattapoisett Rivers.
Recommendation 12.4 The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) should improve the definition of "Safe Yield" to better manage water withdrawals and protect ecosystem integrity of vulnerable water resources.
Recommendation 12.5 The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) should work with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to evaluate existing and future water supply demands with the potentially stressed Mattapoisett River subwatershed to better understand conflicting demands for water resources.
Recommendation 12.6 The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) should adopt the 2006 Water Conservation Standards adopted by the Massachusetts Water Resources Commission as a requirement of the Water Management Act Program for permitting of new water supplies and reviews of existing permits.
Recommendation 12.7 The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) should change the Water Management Act Permit threshold to 10,000 gallons per day for specific subwatersheds within the Buzzards Bay watershed for which the intensity of consumptive use and the sensitivity of the water resources necessitate additional resource protection.
Recommendation 12.8 EEA and DEP should finalize the draft policy for treated wastewater reuse as irrigation, industrial process water, and other non-potable uses.
Recommendation 12.9 As part of the WMA permitting process, EEA and DEP should offer incentives for the use of LID stormwater practices to offset requested withdrawal volumes.
Recommendation 12.10 DEP and USGS should complete Sustainable Yield Studies for subwatersheds within the Buzzards Bay Watershed, particularly the Weweantic, Wankinco, Paskamanset, and Mattapoisett Rivers.
Recommendation 12.11 EEA and USGS should develop a water budget for the potentially stressed Mattapoisett River subwatershed to understand better the conflicting demands.
Recommendation 12.12 Investigate consumptive water use for cranberry agriculture in the Buzzards Bay watershed and targeted subwatersheds, place that use in context with other water withdrawals, and work with farmers to minimize and mitigate withdrawals.
Recommendation 12.13 Each Buzzards Bay community should evaluate water use and water conservation within their community and take steps to ensure that water is being treated as the valuable resource that it is. All requests for new connections to municipal water should be evaluated in comparison to the state's water conservation standards and overall water use within the community relative to those standards.
Recommendation 12.14 Municipalities should conduct integrated water resource management planning to understand better the relationships and cumulative impacts between and from wastewater, stormwater, and water withdrawals.
Recommendation 12.15 In an effort to keep water use local and discourage out of subwatershed transfers, large irrigation users located outside of the Mattapoisett River basin who receive water withdrawn from within the basin should be identified and encouraged to develop their own local irrigation supplies.
Recommendation 12.16 Water banks should be established to buy and sell water withdrawal credits in order to provide a regulatory mechanism to offset water demands from new development.
Recommendation 12.17 Municipalities should identify and protect future water supply sources that minimize potential impacts on water resources.
Recommendation 12.18 Municipalities (or other public water suppliers) should implement restrictions on unnecessary outdoor water use, establish effective increasing block rates that reward water conservation, and operate using enterprise funds so that money collected from water supply fees and fines remains available for improvements to the water supply system.
Recommendation 12.19 Municipalities (or other public water suppliers) should complete water system master plans on a regular basis. Those plans should include evaluations of current and future demand, potential new water supply sources, conservation and efficiency efforts, and evaluations of potential environmental impacts.
Recommendation 12.20 Permit requirements for private irrigation wells should be instituted so that withdrawals from this significant source can be tracked and potential environmental impacts evaluated.
Recommendation 12.21 Explore other uses (such as conservation education programs) for water use fees collected by the Mattapoisett River Commission.
Recommendation 12.22 Conduct an education and outreach campaign for water use reduction within the Mattapoisett River subwatershed.
Recommendation 12.23 The Buzzards Bay Action Committee and The Coalition for Buzzards Bay should work cooperatively with the municipalities to educate citizens about the interconnection of water resources and the impacts of excessive water use. These education efforts should help citizens understand the necessity of Drought-related water restrictions and the significance of their activities to water resources. They should also work cooperatively with the communities to identify opportunities for LID retrofits to help offset water withdrawal impacts..
Additional Background
Read the BB NEP's Mattapoisett River Targeted Watershed Grant application (large pdf file: 3.4 MB) to see how this action plan might be implemented in one watershed.To fully understand the basis of these goals and recommendations, please read (left click) or download (right click) the complete Managing Water Withdrawals Action Plan (July 2008 draft 2.7 MB pdf).
* This Action Plan was not in the 1992 CCMP.