OPINION

Potable water, drinking water to you and me, is critical to all life on earth. In Pierce County, that water comes from glacier melt or rain. It is taken from rivers, lakes, and aquifers underground. In Washington State there is currently not anyone desalinizing sea water for use, although Florida, Texas, and California do.

In Pierce County the water in Tacoma comes from a few wells, but most comes from the Green River watershed. Much of the rest of Pierce County is supplied by several dozen water companies with systems of wells and individual wells with water rights granted from the state Department of Ecology.

The South Pierce County area from Parkland and Spanaway to South Hill to Roy, Graham and Kapowsin are on a large “sole source aquifer” (SSA). That is a designation given by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.). It means all the water we use is coming from the rainfall entering the groundwater aquifer and extracted through wells.

Streams in the area are also fed by this interaction of rainfall and groundwater aquifers. In Parkland Spanaway the water system known as the Chambers Clover Watershed (Water Resource inventory Area 12, WRIA 12). Here is a map of WRIA12:

Along with ground water, we are building housing outside the cities as far as 208th Street. Those areas are having sewer main lines and trunk lines all the way back to the Chambers Bay Wastewater Treatment Facility.

To make those floaters move, they take a lot of fresh water with them, right out of the aquifer and out to Puget Sound from Chambers Bay, depleting the aquifer.

There are other options. Science has produced a method of treating sewage that uses large digesters and sends the treated water back into the ground. These systems do far more than our old septic tank. The biosolids are marketed to agricultural uses and fresh water is not lost flowing out to sea, it sinks back into the ground replenishing the aquifer.

This begs the question, why are we spending millions of dollars on a larger sewer pipe to South Hill from University Place? These trunk line projects close roads for months and back up traffic in places that have too few arterial roads in the first place.

On August 21, 2024, the Chamber Clover Watershed Council will host a field trip to LOTT. That is the Lacey Olympia Tumwater Thurston Clean Water Alliance water treatment plant. The point is to evaluate, with the Surface Water Management department staff, the viability of such a facility in Pierce County. If it is as good as it appears, there may be some future advocacy to move wastewater treatment into a more sustainable system in Pierce County.

With the climate warming up, construction booming, and Clover Creek drying up more months of the year, there is good reason to look at more ways to keep the water local. If the International Space Station can recycle water, we should be able to as well. Let’s all advocate to stop sending our water and sewage to Puget Sound. Replenish, replace, revive.