Saving L.I.'s aquifers — and ourselves

Every day, Nassau and Suffolk counties’ roughly 2.8 million inhabitants draw 375 million gallons of water from the ground to boil spaghetti, wash their cars, water their lawns and, of course, drink, among thousands of other uses, according to the Long Island Water Conference, a consortium of the Island’s public and private water suppliers. That’s enough water to fill 21,600 15,000-gallon backyard pools.

In total, Long Islanders annually use an estimated 13.7 trillion gallons of water. That’s the equivalent of 26 Lake Georges.

We take the water from deep wells cut into ancient aquifers — pockets of fresh water stored amid the soil and rock formations beneath us that have been there for thousands, even millions, of years. Our four “sole-source” aquifers, replenished only by rainwater, are truly a blessing — one that people in many parts of the world wish for each day. The trouble is, our 70-trillion-gallon water supply is being diminished through overuse at the same time that we’re polluting it with pesticides, herbicides and petrochemicals, which make their way into the soil slowly, so it may be decades before we realize their full effect.

And that’s not all. As the level of fresh water in the aquifers diminishes, saltwater from the Atlantic Ocean and the Long Island Sound seeps into our water supply. If that supply becomes too salty, our drinking water could become unusable. And, living on an island, we would have no choice but to import our water from elsewhere. From where, and at what cost? Who knows, but one thing’s for sure: Water wouldn’t be anywhere near as cheap as it is now.

Already we’re seeing signs of saltwater intrusion in our aquifers. State Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg, a Democrat from Long Beach, recently wrote to Joe Martens, commissioner of the State Department of Environmental Conservation, seeking guidance after U.S. Geological Survey tests showed elevated levels of sodium chloride, a.k.a. salt, in drinking-water wells in Long Beach. The tests detected 110 parts per million of salt, compared with the 100 ppm in normal drinking water. At 500 ppm, water becomes undrinkable.