Water Customers Town Hall Meetings
Dayton city officials will hold two public meetings to discuss the proposed Source Water Protection Program changes, answer questions and get community input. Both meetings will be in the City Commission Chambers at Dayton City Hall, 101 W. Third St.
Meeting dates and times:
Monday, July 14 from 10 a.m. - noon
Monday, July 21 from 6 p.m. - 8p.m.
When a Sherwin-Williams paint warehouse in Dayton erupted in flames in 1987, city leaders concerned about the region’s source of drinking water set aside an area limiting certain types of contaminants and development.
Now, major changes proposed to Dayton’s Source Water Protection Program are provoking new controversy. Some manufacturers are hailing the changes as correcting a 26-year mistake they say hinders expansion and stifles economic development. Others warn the changes to the nationally-recognized program would leave drinking water more vulnerable to contamination.
The rules affect the amount of chemicals businesses are allowed to have on site and the allowable uses of development built near the aquifer and two Dayton well fields supplying water for 400,000 residents in multiple municipalities. The current protected area includes parts of Dayton, Harrison Twp., Huber Heights, Riverside, Vandalia, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
The proposed plan, unveiled in May for the city commission by Dayton’s city manager and the city’s water department, would shrink the protected area above the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer by 40 percent — from 8,335 acres to 5,214 acres. Fewer commercial and industrial sites would be regulated by the program, falling from 441 to 197. However, the amount of chemicals regulated in a redrawn program area would drop about 95 percent, from 129 million pounds allowable to 5.8 million pounds.
Development rules within the remaining zone would become more stringent and fines heftier for violators, up to $500 a day to a maximum of $20,000. More prohibited uses would be put in place, including vehicle fueling stations, junkyards, plating facilities and injection wells like those used in fracking.
Debate over the changes begins openly this week as Dayton will hold two forums for the public to hear about the plan from officials and provide comment: the first at 10 a.m. Monday and a week later at 6 p.m. on July 21. Both meetings will be in the Dayton City Commission Chambers. Four meetings have already been held by the city for business groups.
The importance of the aquifer can’t be overstated, said Tammi Clements, Dayton’s Water Department director.
“The aquifer system here is a sole-source aquifer, meaning we only have this one supply. So it really does heighten the necessity of being truly protective of that resource,” Clements said.
A change in the program requires approval of the Dayton Plan Board and passage by the Dayton City Commission following input by the city’s volunteer Environmental Advisory Board. The Ohio EPA must also endorse, or approve the plan. The process could take until early 2015 to reach final approval.
The Miami Valley’s primary source of water
About 97 percent of the 1.6 million people in the Great Miami River basin depend on the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer for drinking water, according to the United States Geological Survey. The aquifer stretches from Logan and Shelby counties in the north, hewing toward the middle of the Great Miami River watershed all the way to the Ohio River.
Classified as sole-source in 2004 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the designation means the aquifer is the chief source of water for a large number of people and contamination would cause a widespread public health issue.
In many areas, a chemical spill need travel a mere 20 feet from the land surface through very permeable soil, sand and rock to reach the aquifer.
United States Geological Survey reports show the aquifer to be one of the most productive sources of clean water in the Midwest, with some wells able to pump 3,000 gallons a minute.
Businesses say regulations stifling
For years, Steve Staub has been trying to sell several acres of land next to his business in Vandalia.
“Realtors won’t even list it because it’s in the well field,” Staub said. “It’s virtually worthless.”
A fifth-generation Daytonian, Staub said he's not going anywhere. And if the new plan becomes an ordinance he wouldn't have to. The company would be outside the protection area. But for now, the street running alongside Staub Manufacturing Solutions separates him from a huge plant just outside the protected area a few hundred feet away where rail cars are loaded.
Staub said no property owner wants to contaminate their property. “They know it’s going to ruin their property values,” he said. “I want clean drinking water. Everybody does.”
Staub and Mike Gearhardt have been the most vocal critics of the protection plan. Both say the rules went too far in 1988 when the program was enacted and crossed another line in 1995 when revisions limited the amount of chemicals allowed.
Gearhardt said he filed a lawsuit against the city because he couldn’t grow his business. His company eventually settled with Dayton allowing his business to expand some, but JBK Manufacturing and Development is now close to the limit of chemicals allowed, currently 14,000 pounds.
Staub’s blog, Made in Dayton, has been an electronic soapbox where he often criticizes the well field plan. Although he hailed the news that Dayton might be correcting what he called a mistake, he says he can’t support the plan yet.
‘They’ve proposed some things but none of them are as realistic as they should be,” he said.
Planning for the worst
The massive Sherwin-Williams paint warehouse fire led to the formation of the Multi-jurisdictional Well Field Protection Program, today’s Source Water Protection Program.
On May 27, 1987, a lift truck operator spilled a few cans of flammable liquid that was likely ignited by a spark from the truck’s electric motor, according to an exhaustive report compiled by the U.S. Fire Administration.
Sitting at the heart of the aquifer on Dayton Park Drive, the 190,000-square-foot warehouse was on fire and contained more than 1.5 million gallons of paint and other products. The report describes the intense heat turning aerosol cans into projectiles that rained down on 84 responding firefighters.
Glenn Alexander, the Dayton fire chief at the time, along with other local and state experts, determined to let the fire burn rather than risk spoiling the aquifer with thousands of gallons of contaminated water.
The fire burned almost six days but the area’s groundwater was saved. After coming perilously close to experiencing an enormous environmental disaster, however, community leaders agreed to put in place a well field program that would protect the region’s drinking water supply.
Concerns raised
Groups in the community tasked with resource protection are raising concerns about changing a program that continually receives national accolades from organizations like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ground Water Protection Council and American Water Works Association.
Dayton’s Environmental Advisory Board, a volunteer board appointed to make recommendations to the city commission, pushed back on some aspects of the plan during a briefing by Clements Friday afternoon at City Hall.
“All agreed that the scope of existing and emerging threats continue to warrant a conservative approach to protection of groundwater resources to provide for continued delivery of safe drinking water,” Chairman Paul Stork wrote in a June 26 email to other board members.
A subcommittee of the full board cited several concerns about the proposed changes, the biggest being the reduction in the protected area. The subcommittee also outlined other issues, including potential surface water contamination due to changes in well field operations, and a need for increased monitoring of storm water and hazardous materials transported through the area.
Board member Robert Ritzi, a hydrogeologist and Wright State University professor, told Clements and other city staffers the redrawn boundaries would leave an area around Needmore Road open to a Sherwin-Williams-like disaster.
“Just the basic hydrogeologic science tells you you can’t allow a new Sherwin-Williams manufacturing facility across the road upgradient from your main water production well field,” Ritzi said. “It just doesn’t pass the straight face test.”
Environmental Advisory Board member Dusty Hall asked Clements what happens if an environmental accident forces the loss of companies and jobs, using a large employer like Cargill, on Needmore Road, as an example.
“Right now the program protects them, protects their well. This scenario won’t,” Hall said.
The proposed changes seemingly put the city at odds with the Miami Conservancy District as well. The Conservancy District leads the Aquifer Preservation Subdistrict, partnering with federal, state and local governments to continually monitor and analyze the aquifer’s condition on a larger geographic scale. The subdistrict includes all, or portions of Butler, Clark, Greene, Hamilton, Miami, Montgomery, Preble, Shelby, and Warren counties.
“We strongly recommend that the City of Dayton carefully evaluate the potential consequences of the proposed changes to the Source Water Protection Area policies,” wrote Janet Bly, Miami Conservancy District general manager in a June 4 letter to Dayton City Manager Tim Riordan.
“Additionally, the new source water protection area policy does not seem to adequately consider the possibility of a catastrophic groundwater contamination incident,” Bly wrote. “Restricting risk reduction source water protection strategies to the new Well Head Operation Overlay District and Water Protection Overly District may not be sufficient given the aquifer susceptibility and vulnerability to contamination.”
Both Gearhardt and Staub think the threat to groundwater from the relatively small amounts of industrial chemicals they keep on hand indoors pales in comparison to the up to 30,000 gallons of chemicals or crude carried on nearby rail cars. “And not just one car goes off the tracks in a derailment,” Gearhardt said.
The Dayton Daily News reported June 29 that Ohio ranks third in the nation in hazardous material leaks during transport. Michele Simmons, environmental manager for Dayton, told the paper she believes the federal government should require most dangerous rail shipments to be rerouted around the city’s well field because a serious accident could foul the entire region’s groundwater.
Why the change now?
“I think the commission and the city leaders have finally gotten the message that there’s an ordinance out there that is preventing businesses from growing, that’s preventing businesses in the area, that’s impacting property values,” said Gearhardt, the owner and vice president of JBK Manufacturing and Development Co. on Troy Street within the program boundary in Dayton.
“The fact that people are willing to listen is what really started moving the ball,” Gearhardt said.
Clements said those voices have been heard.
“Over the years businesses came back and said, ‘You know, there was no way we would be able to know what we would need 26 years from now.’ And with the rigidity of the program, businesses may have had to move out of this area to grow,” Clements said.
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