Michigan Large Volume Water Use Policy Update
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EmailMarch 7, 2025
More InfoListen to viewpoints of three professional working on the implantation issues of Michigan Large Volume Water Use Policy and how it effects irrigation opportunities for agriculture in Michigan.
Speakers: Lena Papas, MI EGLE; Todd Feenstra, Midwest Water Stewards; Kelly Turner, MI Potato
The 2025 MI Ag Ideas to Grow With conference was held virtually, February 24 - March 7, 2024. This two-week program encompassed many aspects of the agricultural industry and offered a full array of educational sessions for farmers and homeowners interested in food production and other agricultural endeavors. More information can be found at: https://www.canr.msu.edu/miagideas/
Video Transcript
Thank you. The next opportunity we have is talking about Michigan's large volume water policy, an update on any changes, and a little bit of a chance for people to talk about how our policy in Michigan is affecting things. And if the Indiana discussion brought anything to my life in the last two months is that places in the world that have ample water have the opportunity or are targeted depending on where you come from, for all kinds of discussion about using that water. The data processing industry, the number of industries that want water is tremendously the cooling water is tremendously cheaper than any other system for cooling, maybe 15 times more effective per dollar used, and that makes the targets our area, just like the seed corn companies did in the 70s when they looked at Constantine, Michigan and said, this is the place to be because there's ample water and sandy soils and potentially large fields. All of a sudden, we have the two world's largest seed corn company right in one town and drawing from a 50 mile radius. Now all of a sudden it's Michigan's turn and that ends up asking us all, is our water policy in the right place? So what I've got today is three speakers. I'm going to do a quick introduction to help everybody get in mind who they are. Kelly Turner is from Michigan Potato. Kelly served in a number of roles. I'll let her go into the ones that she wants to highlight for today. But she is very active in Michigan Water Council and also serves with me on the Water Council's subcommittee for conservation. Next on my screen is Todd Finstra Todd Finstra is the owner and chief head officer for the Tritium Consultants or Tritium Inc out of Mishawsa, Indiana. I've done work with Todd for, I think, 14 years now. We've had farm groups that are funding a studies on whether large volume water use by agriculture, primarily irrigation, are affecting natural resources. Todd's done a number of those and has progressed from a number of different names of organizations to the current one, Midwest Water Stewards. They're doing some marvelous things in both Michigan and Indiana, very well represented in both. Then last but not least, Lena Pappas has comes to us from Michigan Eagle and she is, I'm going to say water Division director, She's going to chime in with the real title. Yeah. I'm the groundwater and Geologic Services section manager. So not quite a division director, but yeah. I gave you a pay raise and a price change and she's going to be talking to us. Who would like to go first? Lena, I think you have the floor. Like Linden said, I'm Lena Pappas, and you already heard my title. It's a new position for me, so we're still getting my feet on solid ground here, but I'm here today to share with you an update on Eagle's program for a large volume water use update. You can see there my contact information if later on you think of a question that you don't think of in the 10 minutes that I get here to share with you. So the update that I wanted to share, I have it split up into two sections. One specifically looking at the water availability, just a current status update on what's going on across the state. And then I wanted to share with everyone today a little bit more on the update for the WT tool that Eagle has been working on. So we'll just jump right in. This is the current status of the water management areas across the state. I think I saw Linden had shared a map that was very similar earlier in the morning. And what you're looking at here is the different classifications. So across the state, each geographic area has been divided into small watersheds called water management areas. And each one of them have an allocated volume of water that is available for use based on some of the thresholds that have been set out in Part 327. And you can see here where there is a zone A, which means there's plenty of water available as shown in green. Zone B is showing where in blue is showing where there's, you know, some water use, but there's still plenty of water available. Zone C is kind of getting a little bit, you know, the water resources are a little more allocated and it's shown in orange. And then zone D is where there's currently no further water resources available to allow additional registrations. So one of the things that ends up coming up because we have these areas in which we're no longer able to authorize additional registrations is what exactly is going on in that water management area, right? We have the tool. It's just telling us that there's a potential for an adverse resource impact that's actually occurring, and so we're not going to be authorizing any additional water management or water registrations. But ultimately, what we want to do is verify that tool. And part of verification of the tool is going out and actually doing fieldwork to see what's happening on the ground. The map that you're looking at now, it shows the locations of all the stream gauges right triangles, both that have been put in place by the USGS and then also Eagle. And then the circle shapes on the map are showing where Eagle or USGS has gone out and physically taken measurements of the streamlines in that area. Really, this is to help us build a better picture of what's actually going on on site. We don't want to be denying access to water if it's showing that there's plenty of water that is actually available. One of the other questions that we're looking at to try to better understand what's going on in the water management area is we're taking all of the water use reporting data for the zone D water management areas, and we're actually averaging it across time and we're looking at what the reported water use is compared to the registered water volume. The question we're trying to ask here, is this a water management area in which all the water resources have been fully distributed or is this actually depleted? Because we've heard some conversations before you know, we're not seeing some of these depletions reflected in the stream record, and this may be one of the reasons why that's actually occurring, right? So this is a draft data set. It was a couple of different water management areas that were averaged over time in which the water use that was actually reported in those areas was only 17%, even though the registrations were actually showing that all of the water resources had been fully allocated in that area, right? So it's part of the picture. We're looking at it from the point of the field work that's being done, and we also want to look at it in terms of, you know, what are we actually seeing that's being used. So Both of those things are part of the same picture. Then I wanted to actually talk about the WT update because I feel like this is probably the one that has the most practical application for everyone on the call. Um. With the lot that's currently under redevelopment, these next two slides that I want to share, they're draft images of the way that the lot will be redesigned. One of the things that the overall goal, I guess I want to start with is to actually share some of the tools that we have available internally in Eagle, right. So ultimately, the goal is to get rid of the batch tools altogether. We're working with the USGS to, um build new depletion tools that will then be the same set that's used both by Eagle and then also will be publicly available through this interface. And you can see here the three different depletion models that have been mentioned specifically in the regulations that we have. And then there's also a box there for any kind of future analysis that, you know, if the Water Use Advisory Council wanted to suggest we use a different depletion model, we ultimately would be able to add that in the W once we have agreement that it should be in there. Um, One thing that I actually would like to just clarify, this is an option. If you want to continue to use the tool as it's currently designed, you'll be able to select the Hunt 99 to just go through the process and register. But if you wanted to spend time evaluating your own water use, whatever kind of well you wanted to install, you'll have the ability to go through and actually use these different models to change things and do that. This is the next page. Once you actually select which model you want to use, it'll take you to this interface where it will auto populate some of these properties. I don't know if you guys can see my mouse, but you'll be able to select either the baseline properties that are currently available in the watt, or you can go through and actually add them in. I know that this is probably something that everyone will ultimately end up using, but if you have the information, you'll be able to test it out in yourselves and see what it actually says. You'll put your pump information in as normal, um, This is something that's under construction right now. You'll see again that this is in fact a draft interface. But really that's what this thing will look like once it's all up and running. And you'll see down here that you can run actually multiple simulations. The example that's on the screen is that there's currently three that will be available, and you'll be able to delete them or select this one to register if this is the one that you want to go with. And then once you select which one you want to register and if you have additional data that you want to submit to support the determination, right? Like if you say you put in some, hydraulic connectivity value that you got or like, you know, pump test data that you have and you want to submit that for review, then you can kind of, you know, prove prove your case, essentially, you'll be able to submit it through this interface as well. Really what this is supposed to do is increase the amount of flexibility and transparency the whole system works under so that then we can all come to the same answer ahead of time and agree on what it is that you'll end up being registered for. Oh, and just one additional thing I want to add. It wasn't available yet. We haven't gotten to that phase of the tool redesign, but it will also have the stream layers, the transmissivity layers available. The registration information that is already available will also be in a GIS interface so you'll be able to log in this environment and see what we see really. I mean, not everything, but none of the reporting data, but some of the stuff that we use to create the depletion estimates, you'll be able to see those as well. So again, that's my contact information. You can also see Jim and Adam's contact information there. That's Jim Milne is the water use program manager. And then Adam Wigand is the GRMD division director. So if you have additional questions that you want to ask about any of the topics that we covered here today, I'm there to answer those questions. Great. Thanks, Lena. We're going to go to questions after we've given our three speakers a chance to do the intros. Kelly or Todd, which do you think should go next? I'll go next since I saw the look in Kelly's face. So unless you really have a high preference, Kelly, to go next. So when we talk about large capacity wells in Michigan, these are the wells that were registered anything over 70 gallons per minute just in 2022. So there's more, obviously, but this gives a really good sense of where the heaviest irrigation is southwest Michigan, mid Michigan. It's starting to spread more along the western half of the northern portions of the lower Peninsula. 85% of the high capacity withdrawals are ag related. So the group that we work with with Midwest Water stewards, we started a long time ago back in 2008, 2009, with some monitoring and started developing, what do we actually see in the groundwater system? The monitoring network for groundwater is extremely limited. And over the years, we've added more and more wells to this privately run network by collecting data on 15 minute intervals. So it's year round. Once they go in, they rarely drop out. So we have a tremendous amount of information about what those levels look like. I can get to that a little bit later. On top of that, we also have gone out and we collected stream discharge measurements at all these locations. And in these locations here, there are about 350 of them. We look at specific streams that may or may not be in trouble or we think may be in trouble in the near future. And we'll take multiple measurements from the upstream to the downstream end to track how much water is being gained or lost along that stream, and then are there changes between the spring measurements, the irrigation season measurements, and the fall measurements? You know, is pumping impacting the stream or is it some other parameter? On top of that, when we talk about how does the stream interact with the groundwater, we also collect connectivity measurements in the stream beds. We're up around 400 sites for that now as well. And so we're actually going into the stream to take a look at those and see what's going on there? Is it full of organics? Is it clay? Is it sand? Is it rock? What is it? How conductive is it? We're actually going out and getting the real information from the field rather than using some of a statistical approach to it. So that's the information that we've been collecting for quite a while now. And what I'll do now is to show you a very abbreviated slideshow that we've done in the past here. Okay. I say this frequently. I talk about trust in mediation frequently. Whether it's working with Eagle staff or whether it's trying to work through a mediator, whether it's trying to work with irate neighbor, a lake association, water association, watershed groups. Heaven forbid it gets to court. But when we talk to legislators, we all have the same problem. We've got to get people to trust that what we're saying is truthful. And that we actually know what we're doing when we look at it. So I would submit that there is definitely common ground here, and that's a high positive, in my opinion. Everybody is concerned about stewardship of the resources. It may be for different reasons, but everybody definitely is. The quickest way to get to common ground and to take the heat out of a room or tension is to talk about not theories or models or ideas, but to talk about data. That's the one thing that I found in meeting after meeting that is incredibly effective when we have those discussions. The fundamental question, we pump groundwater or surface water, what are the impacts on that stream? I'm going to bridge these two things and pull them together and talk about two basic case studies here. The first one would be Krusk ditch. This is a small drain and we had to run this through the mywat system. We did use a three layer model for this, even though when you look here, this is about a six or seven layer system depending on how you do the breakouts of aquifers and aquatars. So we know we already which solution we supposed to pick. We really only had this choice of a single layer, a two layer, a three layer. So we grabbed the three layer model. We worked on that one and we're working through that one. Um, so we ran a full Oxford test because we want to know the data, what is actually out there, what happens when you pump. You can see where the drawdown occurs here. We have a little over three feet of drawdown. The pump shut off after 24 hours and it recovers. And then we take this recovery data, we flip it upside down and we plot it on top of the drawdown data, and we can see that those two track together very well. The black and the blue here line up very well with each other. We had a good test. We had good validity on the data. It was all checked by hand measurements. We had all the different parameters of the test were being measured at the time, the flow rate, how much discharges in the stream nearby, what the connectivity was. Here we have the actual Oxford test run. We got a great curve map so we could tell the rate of flow. We could tell how much water was stored. Then when we put it into the solution, which currently Nina said there's creating a new website. We don't have access to that now, didn't have access to it at that point. We did find one done by the same authors of the theory. We used their spreadsheet and we found, hey, we ended up with a problem. So the model was predicting that when we turn the well off, it would take almost ten days to fully recover. But our measurements were showing that it only took one day to recover. That leads us to more of the progressive depletion, and it leads to a bunch of questions. What did we miss in the model? Is the data bad? Was the test run poorly? But now what we're doing is we're actually talking about questions of proving out models in real life. If we take real data and we put it into this thing, what happens? What does it look like? Does our real data actually match what we're predicting? Does behavior seem to match what the models are actually saying the models say are happening in the field? This has raised a lot of questions. This has been presented in a couple of different places. I would say and hope maintain that this is an ongoing discussion about the validity of these and the implications. It leads to interesting questions like how accurate is it? It's not just my opinion or someone else's opinion at this point, now we're starting to put real data into these and have these discussions about, is this really happening. None of those discussions are available to be had without doing the fieldwork and the data collection that's going on. The other thing that I want to talk about with the case study is, what are some of the implications on the next step of this study? If there is a denial still, even with the data that's been collected and it's denied and now the water should is out of water, how do we deal with? And so the second case study we were involved with last year on a couple of water user groups or water user committees. They essentially took a group of growers, put them in a room and said, we think there's a zone B or there's interference going on here that we've got to resolve. How do we resolve it? And so there was a study done out of MSU. I don't believe it's been published yet and the goal was to design a guidebook, how do we manage these types of discussions? Those unfortunately didn't pan out very well for a variety of reasons. From my perspective, the biggest hurdles were the growers were very interested in, how do you know there's actual depletion occurring? Can you prove it to us? And can you prove to us if we make changes in our pumping that that will also benefit the system and by how much? And what do we need to change? And if we change this, how much does that impact? Do I have to change more than my neighbor changes or somebody on the other side of the stream or at a greater distance? There was a tremendous number of questions that were what I would say are definitely going to come up in the future. And so unfortunately, the groups never got to a resolution on those. There was only a couple of meetings, and then we basically ran out of time or we ran out of maybe some of that common ground, and we just had to move on. So the researchers continued on with the project, and I think those guidebooks are coming out. From my perspective, you don't get a report from me, but what you get is some strong recommendations. When you find yourself in a mediation situation, whether it's a water users group, whether it is a watershed meeting, whether it's with a neighbor, whether it's with Eagle Regulatory staff, whether it's court. Here are the main things that I would put out there as a group of growers in a watershed. You need to stick together. You need to understand each other, you need to understand the system, you need to have common talking points. You've got to build that base of understanding and agreement, even if it's limited, right off the bat. Another one is don't be intimidated by folks like myself or others who can talk over your head. We're experts. If we can explain it in a way that you understand, we're not doing a very good job of being an expert. You are going to have to learn some new terminology, transmissivity, connectivity, stoivity. Stream bed connectivity. You're going to have to learn some of these new terminologies, but again, ask for an explanation that's understandable. A huge one is push hard for understanding and clarity with each other. Don't talk in circles, don't go down rabbit holes, don't stretch things out. Stay focused because this is going to quickly rabbit trail or spider web into a number of different directions and all that will come out of that is some chaos, confusion, and frustration. Need to be equipped to ask the right questions. There's a lot of wrong questions that we can ask or a lot of wrong statements we can ask. Ask the ones that are pertinent and that move us towards the goal of doing better stewardship of the resources. The last two are incredibly important. We have to be able to prove that there's a real problem and the level of proof is up for debate. Some people are comfortable with less information. So people are just comfortable with only models, some people want only data. The reality of it is that we need both. We do have to have data to use to check the models, to build models, but we also have to have models to do those predictions and do some changes that we just can't wait to see happen in the field. But it's a two sided coin. Not only do we have to prove that there's a real problem, we do have to prove that there's a real solution. Unfortunately, at this point in time, this group of Midwest water stewards may have a tremendous amount of information. And a tremendous amount of data, but there is a huge lack of data statewide, especially in irrigated areas and especially in agricultural fields, which again represent 85% of the high capacity withdrawals in the state. So we do definitely have problems. I think there's some clarity that's coming to it. It's going to take time. It's going to take investment. And on my side of it, I would dearly love to see a much, much heavier focus on some data collection for both verifying but also for measuring what's out there and then monitoring it long term for changes rather than just spot checks. So with that, I'm going to end what I've got to share and show and turn it over, Kelly, to you. Fantastic. So I guess We've heard Lena and Todd and some of the things I'm going to talk about are like, Okay, so how do we bring these two things together? Why do they matter to the agricultural community? You heard Lena say a lot, the word trust, and you heard Todd say the trust and the lack of trust out there. In talking to the growers that I represent, which are the potato growers in the state of Michigan, I'd say that was probably one of the biggest issues where I think things broke down during communications with the researchers who are putting together these water user groups. The farmers got to a point where I think they did create their own water user committee group based off of what they were going through together because they got together and had conversations about what was happening and they started sharing communications and they noticed there were discrepancies in communications that each group were getting. They were different, they were not the same. When it got to the point where The researchers wanted growers to come in and kind of role play through what could you or would you do in a situation where you were asked to come together to form one of these groups and determine, you know, how you're going to share water, the experts that these growers would use to help figure this out were not allowed to attend or be part of the meeting. So, you know, it's the growers put it to me in the context of, so if you're asking the big three automobile makers in the state to come together and to figure how are you going to share the resource of steel or metal a component you need to make your vehicles. But you're not allowed to bring your engineers or your other experts on your team that understand how this works. Those conversations are not going to be very productive and those farmers declined then to attend that meeting unless they could bring the folks who really understood what could you do in these different situations and scenarios. So Back to trust. The MSU researchers did come into the Water Use Advisory Council and gave an overview of the report that has not been finished yet. I think we're still waiting on a couple of things from there. And I think they identified one of the biggest problems was this lack of trust, and so we're going to have to continue to work on that and continue to try to increase transparency in how data is collected, how it's used, and how the models, which ones work to show. Actual things like they happen in real life. And we also have to take into account that, you know, it's it's in statute, and it tells Eagle that you will use this right now, and this is what they have. So, um, We need to be cognizant of that, and I think legislators need to be aware of that because they're hearing from growers, there are issues, but then Eagles hands are tied because legislation says that the statute says you will use this tool. I think all parties will need to come together to figure out how do we move forward together, I transparency and trust. In the potato, I have a bunch of boring slides I could show you, but in the interest of time, I'll show you some cool things and then we'll flip it back over open for questions. The potato industry in Michigan is pretty big. It is always fascinating to me the number of people who don't realize we grow potatoes in the state. The potato industry contributes 2.5 billion dollar to the state's economy every year, and if you love potato chips, you would like us to continue to grow them in the state of Michigan. We are the nation's chipping capital. We grow more potatoes for chips than any other state in the United States. So wherever you are in the US, when you crack open a bag of potato chips, there's a 30 some percent chance that those potatoes were grown here in Michigan. Um, because of that, we grow for some very large companies that you probably would recognize in the grocery store, and those companies are always looking at how do they manage risk? And so farmers are using irrigation to help manage the risk associated with growing those crops. And that translates, to making sure that there's yield reliability, the quality is consistent. We're preventing natural defects that would happen if irrigation wasn't available, and it gives us consistent growth rates. Potatoes put on baby potato tubers and if the water rate isn't consistent, sometimes they'll shoot off other shoots and they'll start a new set of tubers. When you go to harvest that plant, you've got big potatoes and then little tiny potatoes and those are really difficult to sort. It costs money, and then they're just not a consistent product. All right. So this map is one that very large food companies across the world use this third party to determine where they are going to grow the food for their products long into the future. So ten years from now, five years from now, where are they going to be looking to contract growers for the food that they want to grow? So we'll focus specifically on potatoes because that's what I'm most familiar with in this conversation. So This is a really interesting little tool that's out there, and many companies use this to determine, okay, where do we grow next year's crop, or where do we grow the crop three years from now, ten years from now? On the left hand side, There are indicators, risk indicators. This tool is pretty cool because it will tell you the quantity of risk based off of all of these different selections that you can pick from. You can look at drought risk, you can look at groundwater table decline, you can look at water depletion and water stress, and I'll show you. You can also if you see across the top, you can look like what's the baseline numbers now? What does it look like in the future and future predictions, Then you can also sort this by physical risk. You know, are there coastal eutrophication potential problems with this area? Then we get down into this regulatory piece. You know, are there areas where there's a water policy would be prohibitive to them being able to use this area. What I'm going to do is I'm going to zoom in on Michigan because I think that's sorry for any of you who are in Indiana or Ohio, but we're going to look at Michigan. Fit all of Michigan in there. Let's just look at the lower peninsula. Don't tell anyone from the UP that we cut them out because they'll be bad. So if you want to look at all three of these different types of risks together to get the overall water risk, all you do is click this button up here, and then it changes. And then down in the lower right hand corner, you'll see there is like a scale, so you can see that Michigan right now, most of this map to me, really overlays well with the maps that Lena showed and that Todd showed with the different water areas in the state and where irrigation is now and what's available and where are we seeing those zone Cs and Ds. So, um, To me, it would be interesting if we had some platform that would overlay those more, but just from taking a peek at them, they line very well. You'll see we do have some areas over here in southwest Michigan where we're getting to a medium high water risk availability, as well as these orange areas here up in the pit of the thumb is what I'll call it. Three years ago, most of Michigan was red or this burgundy color. We couldn't understand why because we are surrounded by the world's largest freshwater deposits. What was happening and why was this tool saying that Michigan is a terrible place to be growing our food. We actually met with a the folks who head up FridoA and PepsiCo internationally, they put us in touch with this third party folks and it was actually this piece down here, the regulatory and reputational risk. It was the water policy in Michigan that these folks were like, we don't want to deal with the water policy in Michigan because it doesn't make sense to us. It's not. This was, of course, right after we entered into the Great Lakes Compact and the MyWat became how we measure water. We were able to meet with this group, explain how the My Wat works, show them some of the different, um, models that Midwest Water Stewards and Tritium have put together, shared some of the data and the information collected by those growers, and they completely changed this model. So this is the only third party that I'm aware of and it's just because we were in contact with them and they were using this model to say, we're not going to contract with growers in Michigan anymore to grow potatoes because this model says it's a bad place to grow potatoes. So there could be others out there. So if folks on here are corn growers or wheat growers or sugar beet growers, the large companies could be using another third party or even this one to determine future contracts. So this ultimately is one of the reasons why it's so important that we come together and we build trust and transparency into the system and understanding from a grower perspective so that we can all understand and ensure, number one, that water policy works to not only protect the resource, but also that we're allowed to use the resource, When it's available and pertinent to do so. I think that's all I have, Linda. Thank you. Please, if you're listening or a participant, please type your questions into the Q&A. I think both Brendan and Angie are with me. They're going to monitor that. So a couple Alena, can I ask a question? There we haven't had a current approval of any of the applications that have went through the SSR. And yet the SSR process used some of the same models that you're looking at in your new tool. So why would we expect the new tool to give us a different answer than those SSR applications that came in since 2018? My understanding is that there's been several SSRs that have probably been completed in that time frame. And I'd actually ask you a question. What kind of answers were you looking for? Are you talking about whether or not we can authorize water or not authorize water in depleted water management areas? Is that what you're specifically asking? Yeah. I think I think most people are interested in registrations, whether there can be additional registrations in those areas. Yeah. Well, I'm hoping that the way that the new tool will be designed and rolled out, if there is additional information that could support reevaluating the balances in the water management area, then I'm hoping that we'll be able to kind of you know, go back to the drawing board in situations in which that would be appropriate. Really, you know, Eagle wants to support people being able to have access to the water, right? And I think that kind of looking at both of those things together where you're looking at how much is actually being used over time and, you know, what's actually going on in the stream, if we are actually seeing water depletions or not. I think that that can give additional space to people if they wanted to add in additional registrations, right? Or say If we've been working off of a conservative assumption for stoativity or transmissivity or say we weren't sure how continuous a clay layer is that would have potentially been protecting a stream. If we continue to collect additional information, as Todd had mentioned, or we go out and we have a better understanding conceptually of what's going on in the water management area, we'll be able to go back to where we started to better evaluate what the actual depletions are in that area. Because if we're not seeing the tool being able to accurately predict the amount of water that's available, then in my mind, that raises more questions, right? Like, why aren't we actually seeing the types of depletion that the tool says is there? And is there actually more water available? Each one of them, those types of areas, I think will have to be looked at individually. But I mean, at least we can start asking those questions and hopefully answering them. Okay. I mean, if I can jump in on that as well, I want to add a little bit more to what Lean is saying as well from our perspective, and I think everybody's perspective in the industry. I There's two parts to this. One is the model itself, and is it an appropriate model? The other part to it is, is it valid data that's being collected? There can be problems on both sides. We can do a terrible job of collecting data and get data that just fits our own narrative that we want, but we can also do that with a model. Right now we're pretty much limited at this point, practically to using one of those analytical models. One of the questions that we were trying to point out in the case study is, is that model actually representative or how far off is it? So in that case study example, if it's predicting ten days of recovery and it actually takes one, that's not a reasonable prediction for recovery. And so then we got to look at, are we using the appropriate model? But without having some data to put into it and verify some of that stuff, we don't even know what questions to ask or how to say the model is valid or not valid. So there's two separate pieces to this. One is the data for that particular withdrawal that's under question. The other one is, what is the model that's being applied and does it actually fit or represent the important parameters at that site? So it's not a one or another and there's no magic wand for all of it. We've got to address both sides of that issue. So I don't see any additional and Angie and Brendan are hopefully monitoring anything that comes in. Please type any questions in the chat. Bring Kelly back into questions. Sorry. Go ahead. We do have questions. So Andrew Lavern, he mentioned that Kelly needs to clarify that the water Usery committee test project was run by MSU researchers, not by Eagle. It was MSU's decision to limit participation for this test project to the water users only and not to open it up to the water users consultants. Oh, well, I'm sorry if that wasn't clear, but yeah, we were definitely talking about the MSU researchers and the water user committee groups that they put together. So thanks for that, Andy. Yes, that was not Eagle that did that. That was the MSU researcher group. And they did tell the group that they were limiting the people there for research purposes. However, I'm going to push back on this in favor of the growers because when you asked me to come for research purposes and tell you all the different things that I can do to change my water use, I need to bring my experts in it. I go back to the same scenario that the growers put to us. You can't ask heads of companies to come and give examples for how to fix it even if it's for research purposes only, how to fix a very complicated system and not bring the people who are experts in that. And that's where the growers were like, Yeah, we're not comfortable with this. Okay. We only got 5 minutes left. If if people have questions about the trial run of the user group project that was ran by Adam, help me out. We'll think of his name. I can get you the name and you can go into the details, and I think that's going to be presented sometime this spring to the water council so you can catch up on it that way. Kelly, this idea that the perception that we have water problems in Michigan where we have tremendous water resources, is that costing us agricultural opportunities? Based off of our experience with this third party and what we experienced with PepsiCo and Freedo, I would say yes. We were able to intervene and provide updated information and understanding on policy and actual data for this third party to change the model that PepsiCo is using. But like I said, there could definitely be other third parties out there that other companies are using that could be potentially putting contracts at risk for the future. I'm just not aware of additional ones. Lena, is that a concern for you that the perception that we have water problems in Michigan could actually be worse than whether we really do? Yeah, you got it. Sorry. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's a concern. And we're hoping that with the relaunch of the W, you know, we're going to work alongside the Farm Bureau and some other partners and actually hopefully ag extension over there so that we can communicate some of these things more effectively. If that's what this is actually kind of a comment on, then, you know, we'd like to work with everyone to see how our communication could be better. Okay. Unless Yes, we have. Go ahead. Sir. We have another question from Benjamin Phillips and he asked, are there other water risk at Las tool that still weight regulatory risk in this way? I think that's going to is that going I think to Kelly Turner about whether we see other ways to look at water risk or maybe it's Alea's discussion if is there and you Lina's already leaning towards this new tool modification. I'm not sure that I'm familiar with any additional tools, like the risk at list that Kelly had shared. Kelly was the one who introduced that to me, so Okay. And I guess I'll say again, I am not aware of others out there. I didn't even know this existed until we started conversations with PepsiCo and Frito about why they were reducing contracts in Michigan and they were like, Well, this is why we're like, whoa, this is crazy. We need to get on top of this. I will say, Linden, to hopefully maybe wrap up this point for you, water policy right now is going to be a huge discussion. Senator Bar in Michigan has a groundwater protection group is what she's calling it. I think Jim Milnes has been participating, and so has Adam Wigand. Her heart is really in the right place, right? She wants to protect the groundwater from large quantity withdrawals that have actually put a lot of areas into adverse impact in other states. And so she's trying to be forward thinking and kind of looking at, like, citing of large quantity withdrawals. So it kind of fits in with this, but it is causing a lot of consternation because it cuts across several different pieces of legislation and regulation. And so it's apparent, this is a very difficult conversation. It isn't an easy fix, otherwise, there would have been fixes to this already. So very complicated discussions and it's going to take some time. We had Potato Day at the Capitol yesterday and during our testimony to the House Ag committee just talking about the potato industry in itself, we didn't even bring up water. There were a lot of questions about water, so we directed them to the Water Use Advisory Council recommendations that came out in 2024 and said we'd be available to talk more on that. If they're interested. So a lot of interest in this and obviously more discussions to come up soon, so you know a bill number on that so people can Google more information? I I don't think there's a it is. It's 11 81, but it's not out there right now. So it came out last fall and it did not make it through the leaned up process. She's re looking at that to reintroduce it, but her work group thinks there's a lot of work that needs to be done at that. Yet. We've pulled in more people from the Water Use Advisory Council to try to help them shake that out. But it's it's a hot topic and it's on a lot of people's lists. Okay. Okay. Unless there's something else someone sees for a question, probably ought to wrap it up today, I want to thank our panelists, Kelly Turner from Michigan Potato, Todd Fmstro from Midwest Water Stewards, and Lena Pappas from Michigan's Eagle Department dealing with water policy. These people all are very available. Just Google their names and you can find their locations if you want to talk to them. I'd be glad to talk to people about this discussion and how you can get input into the different sections of it, and I'd be glad to take guidance on what you think extension should be doing in this area.
