By ANNE TEARSE

Langley Climate Crisis Action Committee

Everyone on Whidbey Island, homeowners, renters, business owners, developers, farmers, professionals, scientists, etc. have a vested interest in the safety and sustainability of our fresh water supply. I took a deep dive into this subject at a recent all-day conference co-produced by the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts and the Langley Climate Crisis Action Committee. Presentations and workshop are available online at whidbeyclimate.org.

Water is so easily taken for granted — it just flows out of our taps and our hoses. We use it all day long without thinking about it, until something happens and our supply is interrupted or contaminated. Water is crucial for life and yet many of us don’t really know where our water comes from. At a recent event in Freeland, I asked people where they got their water from. Several told me that they believed that we get our water from the Cascades or the Olympics — that it somehow flows under the Sound and arises in artesian wells. Others said “I’m on a system” but didn’t understand or think about where the “system” gets its water.

With the exception of the City of Oak Harbor, we are all reliant on wells that get their water from our “single source aquifer.” And that single source? Rain. Not rain in the mountains, but rain on our island.

Way back in 2005, a report by Island County entitled Water Supply Alternatives Topic Paper stated the “future quantity and/or quality of groundwater resources are expected to be inadequate to meet future demands in some areas of Island County. Areas susceptible to seawater intrusion will be particularly impacted.” Since then we have more and more frequently been subjected to changing weather patterns — longer, drier summers and shorter winters with more intense rainfall that increasingly just runs off into the ocean rather than recharging our aquifer.

Since then our population has grown, and we have built more houses, more impermeable surfaces which cause rainwater to run off rather than soak in. Since then we have clearcut more forests, destroying the forest canopy and soils which help recharge the aquifer. Since then we have discovered PFAS in some of our water systems. If we do nothing differently, looking forward we will see more run-off, more contamination, increasing population, and even longer, drier summers. At what point do we start to draw more water out of our aquifer system than it can recharge? Have we already reached that point? Does anyone know?

Is there a reason to be concerned now? If we are concerned, is there anything we can do? The answer to both questions is “yes!” The reason to be concerned now is that the longer we wait to address the problem the more difficult and expensive it becomes to rectify and the fewer options that will exist.

Everything hinges on keeping the aquifer recharging and limiting how much we withdraw and protecting it from contamination. So the starting place is conservation, and we all know about that. But beyond that we can employ rain gardens and swales to keep rainwater on the land, rather than running off. Well hydrated soils help recharge the aquifer and cool the area. We can replant forests and rehabilitate degraded wetlands. We can prohibit clearcutting. We can install rainwater catchment systems so that we don’t need to draw on the aquifer to water gardens and farms. We can use gray water for outdoor irrigation.

Perhaps most powerfully, we can call on our county and municipal governments to acknowledge that all Whidbey inhabitants have a vested interest in a robust and sustainable water supply and our governments need to act now to ensure the future livability of this island we all love.

My hope is the WICA Water event is the first step of galvanizing our attention and actions as outlined by the experts who presented and led workshops.

Ann Tearse is a member of the Langley Climate Crisis Action Committee, which works with Whidbey Island neighbors to promote, finance and implement rapid, just and measurable actions and advocacy that fully meet the scale and urgency of the climate crisis.