Pennsylvania Has 80 Trillion Gallons of Water. So Why Should You Be Worried?
Your Water, Your Bill, Your Rights: Part 1 of 7
I grew up in a Philadelphia neighborhood where the kids ran through fire hydrants in August and nobody thought twice about where the water came from. It came from the tap. It was cold and clean, and it cost almost nothing.
I still think about water that way sometimes, as I bet many of us do. Pennsylvania is one of the most water-rich states in the country, with an estimated 80 trillion gallons of water in underground aquifers, 2.5 trillion more gallons on the surface in our lakes, reservoirs, and 83,000 miles of streams and rivers; and more than 40 inches of rainfall in an average year. Turn on the tap. Something comes out. Why worry?
Here is why I’m worried, and why I wanted to dive into this series about Pennsylvania’s water resources and water rights, and what we should be doing, right now, to protect them.
Pennsylvania’s water abundance is real. It is also, at this moment, something of a liability. Because when you have a lot of something, it is easy to take it for granted and act as though you will always have a lot of it. We have spent generations treating our water supply as if it were infinite, building our laws, our industries, and our expectations around that assumption. But the world has changed in ways that assumption cannot survive.
In 1971, Pennsylvania voters amended our state constitution to guarantee every Pennsylvanian “a right to “clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.”.
This language, enacted as the Environmental Rights Amendment, became Article I, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. It is not a policy preference, not an abstract goal, but a constitutional right, sitting right next to freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has confirmed it twice in the last fifteen years. The amendment further states that “Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come.”
Under this amendment, the Commonwealth is legally required to conserve, protect, and maintain these natural resources as a public trust, “for the benefit of all the people” of Pennsylvania.
So, we have the water. We have the constitutional protection. What’s the problem?
The problem is the gap between what the constitution guarantees and what the law actually does. Right now, Pennsylvania has no statewide system to track how much groundwater is being withdrawn or by whom beyond basic registration and reporting requirements that operate more or less on an honor system. We have no efficiency standards for industrial users. We passed a law in 2002 requiring the state to identify and protect our most stressed watersheds. The Department of Environmental Protection did the work and delivered its report, and then we never finished the job. Today, we are standing at the edge of the largest wave of industrial water demand this state has ever seen, with regulations crafted for a different era.
Over the next few weeks, I will walk through exactly what is happening to Pennsylvania’s water--who is buying control of it, who is consuming it at industrial scale, and what the absence of fundamental rules means for the sustainability of our water supply and for the water bill you pay every month if you are among the 60% of Chester County residents who rely on public water.
There are clear steps we can take, and we still have time to get it right. But the sooner we act, the better. The window of opportunity may be closing sooner than we’d like to think.
NEXT IN THE SERIES: “Who Owns Your Water?”
The merger of the two largest private water companies in Pennsylvania, what it means for your rates, and why competition matters more than you think.
Rep. Danielle Friel Otten represents Chester County’s 155th District and serves as Chair of the PA Legislative Climate Caucus. This is Part 1 of a 7-part series on Pennsylvania water policy.
The availability of clean water is of utmost importance. Citizens whose wells deteriorate after mining or drilling nearby have lost the legacy that their grandparrents hoped to leave to them.