A newly released draft of the Arkansas Water Plan points to a growing gap between the use of groundwater in the state and the rate at which the region's aquifers can recharge.

According to the plan, which outlines both sources and uses of water throughout the state, Arkansas will reach a projected annual groundwater deficit of about 8.2 million acre-feet per year, based on estimated usage.

Ed Swaim, chief of water resource management at the commission, said groundwater is currently being pumped out of the state's aquifers at about twice the rate that they naturally recharge through rainfall percolation.

"It's not homogeneous throughout the state, but on the whole, we're losing that water in the aquifer," Swaim said.

The plan, which is receiving its first update since 1990, has been under development since early 2013 and involved the participation of multiple state and federal agencies, including the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Arkansas Geological Survey. Swaim said the estimated budget of updating the plan was about $4 million, which included extensive groundwater engineering studies.

Crop irrigation throughout the delta region, which includes approximately the eastern third of the state, accounts for about 80 percent of water use in Arkansas, a figure projected to grow only slightly the next 35 years. But the industry relies heavily on pumped groundwater, unlike the second heaviest source of consumption in the state, thermoelectric power generation, which can often draw needed water from surface water sources including rivers and man-made lakes.

Most of the categories of water consumption that dominate Northwest Arkansas -- municipalities and industry -- account for slightly more than 6 percent of overall usage in the state, according to the plan. But even though many of the area's water needs are met through Beaver Lake and other large drinking-water reservoirs, the fate of Northwest Arkansas is still tied to the rest of the state in terms of water availability.

"Each of those uses on its own appears to be pretty steady, as population grows, as commercial activity and other things grow," Swaim said. "We see that rising at a steady rate -- there's nothing that's off the charts compared to the others, as far as the rate of increase."

Some uses of water are actually expected to decline, according to the plan, including water for gas and oil extraction through hydraulic fracturing.

Approximately 4.75 million gallons of water are used in the creation of each gas well, Swaim said. But because state law establishes a minimum distance between wells, there is a finite number of wells that can be drilled in Arkansas. Swaim said that regardless of fluctuations in oil and gas demands, once a maximum number of wells have been drilled, the use of water for that purpose will decline.

Bill Prior, a geologist supervisor for the Arkansas Geological Survey, said continual depletion of reservoirs throughout the state can also negatively affect water quality.

"If you have an area with considerable draw-down, you usually also have a degradation of water quality," Prior said. "You're siphoning the stuff off the bottom, so to speak, and your water quality usually starts to suffer along with the decline in yield.

"You might start picking up more chloride, more salt in your water. That usually goes hand-in-hand with declining yields," Prior said. "You do have some areas of the state that just don't have any appreciable groundwater supplies to begin with. It's just not there."

The Arkansas Natural Resources Commission is hoping to gather as much input and comment as possible on the draft before the end of the public comment period Oct. 24, Swaim said. He said he intends to present a finalized version of the plan to the commission by the last week of November, and the actual rule-making process will probably extend through mid-2015.

Metro on 07/10/2014