MSU Extension MI Ag Ideas to Grow With

Andy Le Baron from ELGE is going to talk somewhat on the same topic. I think we said large volume water use registration and the role in protecting water resources in Michigan. So that EGLE  division sort of a review of where we are as far as registrations, update on how well it's going. And then real quick discussion about protecting the environment and what the goals are there. Alright, there she goes. Alright, so yeah, so because we've got several different varied topics to cover, wanted to put a little outline here. Yep. We're gonna give a little regulations background, sort of the why and the how we got here. We've heard a lot about streamflow already, so kind of explained why that was why that's the linchpin that all the regulations are kinda hinge upon. We are going to talk more about that stream like reclassification just a little bit. There's certainly a lot of questions out there still and some rumors, maybe even fears and so forth that I directly want to address about those. So that'll be that'll be good and specifically about the Prairie River reclassification. of course. We're going to hit on that, a little bit more about water users committee, as was mentioned. And then and then earlier today, Lyndon did talk about some violations enforcement also, this is no one's favorite topic to talk about, but I am going to cover that too. So just kind of explain what's happened and what's going on in the program and so forth. Alright, so, yeah, like the very beginning, if folks don't know the reason we have these regulations is pretty much because of this thing called the Great Lakes Compact. It is a law it's actually a state law an inter-state law meaning that each of the eight states in the Great Lakes Basin, they're all having identical law on their books. That's what a comp a compact. Any compact is an  inter-state Law. Meaning that each state has the identical thing enacted in the legislature. And it's also a federal law because in order to become a Inter-state Compact it has to be ratified by Congress and signed by the President. Obviously, the US side of thing wouldn't, wouldn't cover with the Canadian side of the Great Lakes basins. But there are identical laws in both the Quebec and Ontario provincial law. So everyone is playing by the same set of rules here. This is what the Great Lakes Compact requires kinda three major points. One of those being registration of all large quantity withdrawals, that there's very limited exceptions, very few exceptions. It, it means that everything that's ever existed, old ones, even if you've been around long before the compact was enacted in 2008, those all still have to register with each one of those states, their home state there. So new withdrawals from that time going forward, from the time the compact was enacted. Going forward, they have to be permitted. I got I've got permitted in quotes there because that's like that's a general term that most folks are familiar with what that means. Of course, it just means that the withdrawals have to be vetted in some way. The state agency has to review them, assess them for their impact. Essentially, this is true in all the states and the provinces, new withdrawals from that point forward. The date that we actually use in Michigan is July 9th of 2009. From that date forward it had to be reviewed and assessed and more or less legally authorized or permitted. And then the third thing is that the water use has to be reported on an annual basis so that most folks here are familiar with that. Why did we sign onto this compact thing? This is the reason why is because of a fear perceived or otherwise fear of a large-scale diversions, Great Lakes water. This was an actual billboard put up in this state. Some of you may remember it. I think it was put up a couple of locations on I94and I96 back in the early 2000s when that compact with sort of being discussed and debated and hashed out, that kinda gets right to the point there. So what the compact did when it was signed is it did put a federal ban on new diversions, new large-scale diversions be they buy pipeline or canal or tanker truck or rail tanker what, whatever. Large-scale diversions are prohibited by federal law and state law of course. But that is why we did it. However, in order to get that get that prohibition, that ban on diversions  to preserve our Great Lakes water that came with the catch. The catch here that we had was pretty much these two major tenants of it. That first, we had to demonstrate in basin and water conservation practices here. Basically saying, if you're going to tell folks from arid, dry parts of the country that our water can't be moved and transferred out there. We can't be wasting it away here within the basin ourselves. We have to demonstrate water conservation practices. Another thing is that we have to prevent significant. I got this in real quotes, double quotes says because a direct quote from the compact prevent significant adverse Adverse impact, I should say. So obviously significant might mean different from one person to another. And the compact left it purposely vague, just significant what that means. It left it up to each one of the states to decide on their own what is significant. So each state had  to decide and define how much adverse impact is too much, what amount becomes significant, what methods they are going to use to employ these regulations and to measure basically the amount of adverse impacts. This was all left up to each one of the states. So if you've been paying close attention to what Todd Feenstra had just mentioned in the previous session here, about all the models and streamflow and monitoring and all this kind of thing. What I hope the takeaway message you might get is that scientific metrics like a way to measure water quantity, are very, very difficult. Like they're elusive, they are hard to get your hands on. That's the message I certainly take away from it. And especially in doing my job every day for many, many years long time now, it's just the water quantity business is just like I don't know. It's a challenge. It's like a crystal ball or ouija board or something sometimes that's what it seems to me. I am not a hydro geologist. I get to talk like flippantly and not have any repercussions because I don't have that. That's not my job. I just get to sit in the peanut gallery and cast stones here. But anyway, so why did Michigan choose stream flow as part of our decision? The way that we were going to regulate large quantity of water withdrawals are large volume model would cause the kinda two primary reasons. The biggest one, I guess I would say I don't know which one's bigger. But two primary reasons. DNR already had a bunch of data they'd been collecting for years and decades basically that could relate flow in a stream to fish populations like the actual species of fish that live there. So they had to establish this data that, that basically predicts very well if you have a certain flow in a stream, meaning the amount of flow and the temperature, especially in the summer, summertime temperature. You can predict what kind of fish are gonna be there just by knowing the flow of the stream is like very reliable. They're just going to show up if the habitat is there for the fish, they're going to show up, they're gonna be there. If it's not, they're not and so in this way like fish are very good indicator of a streams character. I got that one in single quotes because it's kind of a weird concept here a little bit and it's not a direct quote from any law or anything like that. This is my words. So, a streams character like it's ecological character, can more or less be defined by the fish that are there. Meaning that if you have a change in the flow, you have a change in that streams character because you have a change in the fish population. So that's kind of the, this is the, this is the reason, this is why there is a good scientific basis really to use streamflow as, because it has some metrics attached to it when very few things do. Some measurable metrics attached to the stream flow by way of the fish being the indicator. So our legislature, yours and mine all decided that a change in the streams character was going to be our our interpretation of a significant adverse impact and that's what the legislature decided to prevent from occurring. And that's why we have the law we do. Another big reason why stream flow is the linchpin of Michigan's regulations is, is that that decision by our legislature was heavily, heavily influenced by this high-profile case back in the early 2000s. Some of you who've been around for while certainly probably remember the first go round with Nestle bottled water and bottled water plant that's located in Stanwood, Michigan, North Grand Rapids. The wells that are used to supply that water bottling plant that like drew intense media scrutiny in scrutiny in the early 2000s. And actually when that when that issue went to the courts and was hashed out in litigation, the primary focus from a technical standpoint, the primary focus was the amount of streamflow depletion caused by Nestle's wells on a nearby stream. That's that's that's what was argued that was decided. That's when there was a final court order issued that limited Nestle's withdrawals. It did actually restrict their withdrawals to a lower amount than what they originally planned on and installed wells for. They can't pump that full amount because what deplete the stream by up to 24% of its index flow. We're going to talk about that in a little bit here later. But the court said 24% was too high. Sent it back and said that they need to be reduced. So that is, uh, there's there's no denying that there's a very big reason why we are where we are. So how how are these regulations put into place? I'm going to just, just back up a little bit just to make sure everyone got this. I was thrilled to see that this little chart didn't show up yet. This little cartoon didn't show up yet in anyone else's show today. But this is like the general general way that groundwater and surface water stream flow interaction occurs this does not, it's not intuitive to most folks out there on landscape until they start to think about it for a minute. But basically, if you have any stream that is flowing at a relatively constant rate, even long after the last rainstorm has passed by. The reason it is flowing it that relatively constant rate is because of groundwater influence and infiltration into that stream bed. Groundwater moves laterally from the sides towards the stream, towards the nearest stream and it'll leave it even move vertically, fighting against gravity up into the bed of the stream and contribute to its flow. So this is like that. What happens, you know, there's, this one is not up for debate. I guess this is the way it works in many of our streams in Michigan have a fairly strong groundwater component that discharges to those streams where we're blessed in that way. It leads to some kind of world-class fisheries for trout and other cold water species, species that many other states wish they had. And so now this is going to get into more of the discussion obviously related to regulations here today. A different little cartoon from a scientific paper that I borrowed here. And you can see that we've got a diagram there of the, well. So in this, you know, it's for irrigation. A little drawing says that they're going to want to pump it. So that's the well, I'm showing how if you pump a well hard enough and if it's close enough to a stream, the change in the groundwater flow that can happen. You'll see the statement made there by the authors, by the hydrogeologists and in this paper is, again kinda not really up for debate, is water that's  pumped from, well, it comes from two sources. There's actually a third source that maybe so minor that most hydrogeologists don't even consider it in that third source. I'll tell you after the first two. The first the first source where that water comes from is groundwater depletion or that yellow kinda cone-shaped portion that you're seeing here on our diagram, our cross-section of the ground surface there. So that is reducing the water level in the aquifor. This is how a well works. This is how they function, this is what happens. There's gonna be some amount of drawdown in the water levels surrounding well for basically every every well that's pumped. And that what that yellow portion they're showing is obviously where this used to be saturated ground, water-filled, soil pour spaces. Now when you pump that well hard enough, it creates an unsaturated portion there which is obviously going to change the direction of flow. And how what how the groundwater is going to flow around that wealth flow to it. And if you're close enough to a stream, it could give this an extreme example in the cartoon about actually pulling water that's flowing in the stream, pulling out of that stream and back towards the well. That's a pretty extreme example. May not may not occur like that too often unless the well is really close. Pump, pumping quite, quite significant volumes. And what have you. The second the second source of water to a well is streamflow depletion. Obviously, the diagram already showed you that. So this is, this is just the two main things that can happen, um, and obviously amount of streamflow depletion that that's going to occur just because largely dependent on the local geology, the distance from the stream, how much that well, it's pumping. You'll see right there that statement that the that this hydrogeologists made is that streamflow depletion cannot be directly measured and it's challenging to estimate. Yeah, you don't say that is I think we're all getting a pretty good picture about that. So how how do we estimate that? We'll go through that real quick? It's already already been touched on here, of course, today in many folks might be already experts in it. But before we  do that I got a little bonus question for everywhere, for everyone out there. What is, what is wrong with this picture here that I pulled from the scientific report? Younsuk and Lyndon like this is, the first thing that has jumped off the page and it's like, obviously if that's a center pivot system, which it may be, it probably is, it kinda shows it coming  up out of that well there they've obviously got their nozzles like reversed end for end, they  got the water gushing right closest to the pivot and it's barely trickling out at the end. I just thought that was kinda funny. I was gonna say they didn't have any wheels under the boom. Well, that's true too. That is a good point. Yeah. But yeah, so we use a model to estimate the the the streamflow depletion. Obviously, we were all pretty well familiar with that water withdrawal assessment tools, the state of Michigan's model that's used for the first line in the regulations in-between property owner and a prospective new withdrawal or new well and being able to use that get legal authorization that the water withdrawal assessment tools, the first step in that process. How does it work real, real simply. It needs a model and so, so it needs some inputs into it. The well location, the well depth, or at least the point that the total depth of the well, but the point the shallows point of water is being drawn into the well, the pumps size a schedule that the well is gonna be actually that the pump is actually going to be running on like approximate schedule of how often it's gonna go. Days per week, hours per day, that kind of thing. Need to know the local geology that the characteristics of the local aquifor there are key component that goes into that model. Distance to the stream surrounding the well, the little diagram I've got here and you can see from that X marks the spot that well, it's going to take a distance to all the streams and all the surrounding watershed. You can see that the brown squiggly lines are the are the watershed boundaries. So it's taken a distance to all the different streams in the watersheds that are surrounding or adjacent to or touching the homewaters. So the one that the wells in. So that's that's what's going on there you can see that last one is that shortest little distance right there to that stream that even though it's a lake that's going through there, if the if the lake has an inlet and an outlet, it will always have an artificial stream path drawn through it so that we can still measure a distance from a well to the closest point of an artificial path. Obviously, the distance is not gonna be precise when we're talking about a going through a lake. Got two examples of artificial stream path going through a Lake. But the general ideas, this is how it works. This is not an exact science by any means. We already kind of established that. Then, then the output from this model, of course, is streamflow depletion. And whenever I hear the word model, it's helpful because I don't like them and I don't like it in general. Just the general statement, but it's just a, it's just a very complicated mathematical formulas. What it is, what a model really is. In fact, that one right there, those are the two formulas that are used in the water withdrawal assessment tool. That's that's what they use. I'm sure most of you folks out there just looking at oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure. It sounds the complimentary error function or you take the square root of that. Okay, great. Now, not me, I hate that stuff. That's what that's what it actually uses in the background. So the actual results that come to you after use of the water withdrawal assessment tool. Obviously, the the amount of streamflow depletion is key in that. But really what controls your answer and your outcome and your future unfortunately, is is the watershed status, the status of that watershed. So, this map of all those little squiggly lines are that's showing the 5,500 different water sheds or water management areas that the water withdrawal assessment tool keeps track of and uses sort of the functional unit of our water water regulations. So each one of those has a bank account. You've heard that mentioned earlier in the day or something like a bank account of legally available water. Totally strange concept. That is what we've got, is what we have these days in Michigan. Legis, legislation based on the amount of legally available water. The modeled amount, that streamflow depletion amount is deducted from the bank account for for each one of those streams, the watershed for those streams in each one of the streams. So you're not allowed to draw it down to zero. Can't take all the water. That's what the legislature decided of course. So each one has a minimum balance that you can get to in that minimum balances is called the adverse resource impact, like limit or what have you. It's a line that can't be crossed by law. So we're going to use that ARI acronym a few more times here to today. So kinda get used to it. I'm afraid. Another idea to, to introduce if you're not familiar with it, is the results that you get. They actually come in a form like a letter grade, just like back in school, um, where an A is great. You're passing with flying colors and adverse resource impact is not likely at all. D, in this case, D is more like an E or an F and D is D is failing. You can't, can't go there, can't do that. It's saying that an ARI is likely to occur based on that amount of streamflow depletion that's been predicted or modeled. And then Band C are just on their, on their way in between the two, the two points on this spectrum there. So this map here is showing basically those 5,500 watersheds. This is putting them on the map just by color with no boundaries on them in-between. Just to show the color, basically the status of each one of those watersheds over time. So this was when the law went into effect back in 2001 before any withdrawals that ever started to be accounted for and taken away from our legally available legally available amount of water. This is what it looked like. So the reason that the whole state didn't start green in zone A is, as Todd mentioned earlier today, there are 677 of these 5,500 ish streams and state that are called cold transitional. They don't have a zone. They never get a zone Aown age. They never got to start at one. So what you're seeing there, all those yellow areas are cold transitional streams. So we're going to Headlight, two years, 2009-2011, you can see it a little bit of change. There are some Zone C watersheds, there's some some more zone B watersheds. And then even these 15 Zone D watersheds. Todd's already graciously covered this point for us that zone D is a temporary status only. It just means that a site-specific whenever you see a red watershed in the map or a or a watershed is sitting in zone D currently in the database. It is just pending that status while a current site-specific review is ongoing, at the completion of that site-specific, that watershed is gonna go back into C, B or A one way or another. Jumping ahead here to 2013, you'll see that tremendous change there and see what happened between 2011 in 2013 is 2012. But we all know what happened in 2012 was that extreme drought. This area and much of the, much of the Midwest even. And so you can see the direct result basically of new agricultural irrigation withdrawals being registered with the state. All the areas that show up now, that big change between 2011 and 2013 of all the red, orange and more yellow is those are the areas where irrigation occurs or, or was planning to occur or has now since occurred and so forth. New areas of, areas of new irrigation, I should say. The other thing that happened that contributed to that, as we did have sort of like, like extremely high commodity prices. And they might even be like kind of record high prices for a bushel of corn or soybeans during this period of 2012 to 2013. So those who had, who are getting crops during that drought time or later on, they had, they basically had the investment capital that they could put back into, into irrigation. So it's sort of combination of factors there that not only was the reaction to the drought, but also just having the capital available back into the farm. 2015, kind of the same trend is going to keep on going here. There's really only one direction this can go. That's the system that's been set up by our legislature. Just kinda continued progression. You will see a big change from here. 2019 is getting bad, and then 2021 and actually does regress a little bit. The reason for that, It's very simply as we add a tremendous backlog of site-specific reviews because we had nowhere near enough staff to keep up with the number of requests that were coming in. And then we were finally able to add staff caught up, eliminate that backlog. There were tremendous delays back in this time to 2019 period, which was terrible for everyone. Us included. We certainly understand it was terrible for property owners and so forth. And it was it was bad for us to trust me. But along came new staff, great new staff that we have working for us today and, and save the day and now we're caught up when we get those things done very, very quickly. So up until today, the map will change a little bit here and there, but generally speaking, it's going this direction. This is a look at the actual database or that the table of the database that controls or at least keeps track of those watershed status. So a couple of things just to highlight here what it is, what it has. First is index flow that's been mentioned several times today, including by me. But it's the it's the median August flow. Typically that is few times when it might be the September flow for a few streams, but, but generally speaking, almost always it's the median August flow, median means half the time it's above, half the time it's below it. It's not an average flow, but it's median flow. And so we have an index flow for all the streams. The next column there. So each one of the rows, I should say is a stream. It's a record for one of the streams or water management area. The next column going across is a stream classification or the stream type, So it's done by size and by temperature, July average temperature and its size like a stream is smallest. The small river is bigger, than a large river is the third size category that we had put in place. These three columns here. This is going to get weird. I'm not going to try and explain it in perfect detail. But these were the original gallons per minute of streamflow depletion available in each of those three zones, zone A, B, and C. So this is this is now converted into gallons per minute because that's how that's how the model works and how it is done by gallons per minute. Pumps are put in by  gallons per minute. It's just the units that was chosen to go by gallons per minute of streamflow depletion. This is the original before any before any withdrawals or registration started to take away from it. Then the last three columns are adjusted or the current gallons per minute of streamflow depletion available in each of the zones A, B, and C after registrations have been put in place or  authorized by the state. So that that last one that's the real obviously that's the that's the that's the money right there. That's the that's the most important point is the bottom of those zones C category and that line is the zone D or the adverse resource impact limits. So that's how many gallons from an art available? Absolutely. Period before the before withdrawal can not be authorized any longer. So just a couple of things to kinda show and illustrate how this works or what's going on here, that watershed right there in the middle of 4135, it started with 1,378 gallons per minute. Now it has only 30. So obviously there are 1,348 gallons per minute depleted from that streams available amount that was due to I went and looked it up. It was due to 12 registrations for different wells of 12 different wells in or near that watershed that affected its flow. So that's kinda how that happened. You can see that that watershed is currently in zone C because zone A and B have no water or in this case, yeah, it's negative. This is just a, just a mathematical way of showing how the database has to work. So those are actually in negative numbers, but just means that the watershed is sitting in zone A or zone C. What that means. Here's another example that is really worth, worth noting for people because it doesn't make sense on to the folks out there in the real-world and so forth. Is that this watershed right here it only had a 0.1 cubic feet per second flow, CFS flow. And that, doing the math on that warm stream allowed three gallons per minute available for depletion? Yeah, that's that's it. Basically what that means is virtually any withdrawal anywhere near that stream that's going to affect that streams flow will fail like it just cannot pass these regulations and these stream this small or would that small amount of legally available of water, they're pretty rare. But there are, they are out there. And this is just an example of a stream where just one withdrawal can cause you, the map shows Zone A everything's on A around you and one withdrawal can cause it can go from from zone A to zone D or not even be able to authorize. If it has virtually any impact at all. It's just not going to fly, It's just the way it goes. I'm going to explain a little bit more. Start getting into this classification thing, Stream Classification a little bit deeper. It's already been mentioned a few, few more times I'm going to explain it fully for you. So the three different sizes, which I already mentioned, it's actually not the stream width or even the stream flow that dictates its size. It's actually its watershed sie. So when it's talking about a stream, a small river or larger river, its actually talking about how big its watershed or it's contributing area, and then the average July temperature, there's four different temperature classes there. There are no cold large rivers and Michigan, so that's why I got that not applicable there. But if you kinda look at that same table rubric there and just put the percent of index flow that is allowed to deplete, allowed to be depleted. This comes straight from the legislation. It's explicitly spelled out in there. You can see everything is kinda 20 to 25% except for that cold transitional class, which is so much smaller. The reason for that It's kinda teetering right on the, right on the boundary between these cold water indicator fish species and a warmer water indicator species and a very small amount of temperature or flow change in those specific types of streams will cause it to kind of kick off. So they're just much more sensitive, I guess is the is the sensitive to streamflow depletion is the best way to put it. So if we take an example stream that has a ten cubic feet per second flow, index flow to it. Just kinda do the math and throw it up there. You can see that if that, if that you've got the same size stream or same size, small river or larger river of fallen across here. If you just change the temperature classification, you can see how much of a difference that makes in a cool stream. Same size, same everything to it. But if it's classified as cool or if its temperature is cool, It's better way to put it. You have 1,100 and some versus just 90 available in a small river. That, That's a cold transitional small rivers. So that's why that's a big deal. So that's why it's gotten a lot of attention and why Todd talked about earlier today and why I'm talking about it because Lyndon asked me to. That proposed reclassification This is where the Prairie River watershed that was proposed or still is up for proposed reclassification is located right down on the Indiana border, the headwaters portion of the Prairie River. Yep. As was mentioned I think earlier that it was originally classified as warm by a model, essentially so a statewide model, a different model. You use models for everything. Said that based on all the characteristics, I don't know them all. I'm not familiar with that model to I probably should have done some more homework, but said that those this stream should be classified as warm. DNR surveys subsequent to that, both being temperature and monitoring as Todd mentioned there of fish populations show that it's actually more cold or cold transitional for those years that they were out doing surveys. like very, very clearly it was not a warm stream during the time that they were out there, as indicated by the fish population, fish community, fish species, and by the temperatures very clearly. But however, as Todd mentioned, because the data was collected, the data was actually collected before the DNR had written a protocol or reviewed and EPA protocol, which as Todd mentioned. I think that I'm going to try and not to just respond to everything there because I don't want it to take too long, but that's the reason why the measuring and monitoring wasn't taken by this by what DNR now has as an established protocols is that the data was collected prior to having a protocol in place. The DNR has said, as I mentioned, that the decision to change or whether or not to change, it's just been delayed going to collect more data for three years is what's the plan right now? That's that's what's going on. I so this is a bigger question that I'm here to talk about is what happens if that classification does change. This was shown in a different form today. This is why it's important that we know what happens if the classification changes is just by showing the, you know, the prevalence of agricultural withdrawals. We're at ground zero here for agricultural withdrawal. And in Michigan, the Prairie River is just kinda maybe just barely on the outside of the highest density areas in St. Joe County of course, but that's why it's important. So I'll go through a couple of different scenarios of both Stream Classification change or monitoring for adverse resource impact. So scenario a, we are going to talk about here is wha this is obviously the Prairie River example. What if it went from its current warm classification to a cold transitional classification? So obviously at that point in time, the legally available water like that table that I showed  with a Zone A, B, and C. The amount of water in there that is going to immediately decrease below the ARI threshold. So everything would go to negative in that table just because of withdrawals that have already been registered and out there operating on the landscape since 2009. There's a number of withdrawals and Todd mentioned 78 or something withdrawals that have been registered in this watershed or near this watershed that affect this there that could potentially affect this watershed. The impact of those withdrawals on the watershed would instantly throw it into that negative category zone in zone D below the ARI threshold. This I really wish all the rumor and so forth that was flying around in the in the agriculture community. I wish someone would have just come and asked. We could have given them this answer. You don't need to sue. At least not yet, I guess, because very clearly black and white in the law registered withdrawals. So existing withdrawals that are out there, they registered with the state. They cannot be restricted or revoked by EGLE. Like there is no legal authority for ELGE to do that, even if we wanted to or something for whatever reason, you cannot do it, it's not happening. So those existing withdrawals, whether registered through the tool or older than that, they can't be touched by EGLE. What it does mean, of course, is that new proposed withdrawals can't be registered though. So if you're in the negative, we can't legally authorize those withdrawals. We're talking about, you know, obviously on paper. This is how the program works. You're on the database, the digital database. And then so if any new site-specific review requests come in, they would have to be denied that new registration. So that means that no new withdrawals from that point forward could could legally be operated of course. A different scenario here. So what about a scenario where we have an ARI, that's likely to be causing because we've got a streamflow reduction. Scenario B. We've got a stream gauge out there and it happens to show flows used to be above the ARI limit, but now they're reduce below the ARI So hypothetical situation there. What could, what could EGLE do at that point? Same story. Registered withdrawals cannot be restricted or revoked by EGLE, period. Same story, new proposed withdrawals, though, can't be registered. Site-specific reviews could, would have to  be denied because we are legally bound by law to consider actual streamflow measurement. So this would be a case where even if that table, the database says we're in the positive with water legally available, if we have a stream gauge out there that are showing us that there is likely or the threshold has been crossed for an adverse resource impact. We have to consider those actual stream flows and we could not authorize any new withdrawals. They're either. Or so here's, here's a little bit different twist that is much lesser known, I guess maybe, but actually maybe all this is lesser known from what I've been hearing, rumors flying out there. But if the flows are reduced by more than 25%, based on a stream gauge record or something like that, EGLE could file a lawsuit in civil court. Against property owners, person's property owners who are knowingly causing the ARI. So knowingly that I should have put that one in quotes through that comes right from the law. Knowingly would mean that if EGLE has data that suggests this, we're going to be required to convene a water users committee. We're gonna be letting people know that their withdrawals based on all the scientific data that we have available to us is suggesting their probably are, that they are causing its adverse resource impact. They have. They can voluntarily choose to lower their withdrawals to now, to no longer cause the adverse resource impact, but we can't force it. Or EGLE can't force the state can't force it. However, you could sue and then the court could order an injunction on those withdrawals. If if it came to that or what have you, they would add obviously, it would go against people who are knowingly causing the area. So they'd been notified by email. It could go to court. I hope no one out there thinks that this is the way that anybody wants it to go, but it's in the law. This is how the process is put in place. So do we have that occurring here in Prairie River at all? We've seen someone some charts of the Prairie River flow, but this is a little bit, a little bit more right to the point because we need to know the average August flow for the 60-year period that we've got the stream gauge. This site at M66 is actually it's about I think it's about 14 miles downstream as the fish swims from the watershed that's been proposed to be changed to a cold transitional stream. So it's a little bit downstream where this stream gauges that we've got this long 60-year period of record here. It's got the same exact trend that the whole years, if you're looking at the whole year's worth all the flows over that period of record. But it would be more important to know what the August flow is doing here. But it's got the same exact trend, almost flat, actually a little bit rising. over that that dotted line here is the trend line showing just a slight rise, slightly more flow in August in this 60-year period, which is just fascinating, just speaks to the fact of how difficult this science is in my mind anyway, in that we've had an incredible increase of agricultural irrigation this area, starting in  1962, there probably was none or close to none, very little agriculture irrigation. And throughout that whole time period with the expansion of agricultural irrigation in this area, stream flows have increased. In August during peak, peak of summer, peak of the season, peak of potential irrigation season. What about September? Same thing. Slightly higher rise actually. July, going back a little bit just so it just kinda wondering, well, is there something going on, something different July is actually a much greater increase in flows in I guess I also wanted to point out just how wild this chart is. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't lend itself to a line graph. There's no, there's really no line between these things, but it's showing the average flow for the entire month of July, August, and September, and even using the average for the entire month, look how much of a wild swing we have from year to year. And it's just like I say, stream flows and water quantity things just don't lend themselves very well to a measurable impact. Unfortunately, I say unfortunately because of the law that we have in place when we have to, we have to live with it just isn't we're not set up to be able to monitor for these things very well, or to show that it's not happening. They were just not set up for one another. There is a new gauge. This, this was this was discussed earlier. That's the much more recent case, so it doesn't have that long period of record. This one is really, really close, almost right at the mouth of the watershed. The headwaters of Prairie River, at US12, right across the river there. The August average August flow for this for this nine-year period. You can see same thing. It's going up September, pretty flat, but it is going up July. Not the big difference that we saw further downstream. Not sure why. Who knows why? I'm not even going to speculate. But, but anyway, going up, why is it going up? Everyone's best guess, of course would have to be rainfall. It's been talked about going back to Jeff Andresen, which was my first real job in my life. That was great to see Jeff again here. I worked in Jeff's shop when I was back at Michigan State in school and a little bit after-school even but yes. So I think Jeff actually showed the same chart, but it was much prettier one. But you can still get the idea there. Each one of the black dots and lines is a year's worth of annual precipitation for the entire state. So this is whatever it's kinda general data rates for the entire state. And then the green bars are a five-year average of those years worth of precipitation. Going back, way back in 1895, right? You can see the just the increase that hopefully everyone did was able to see Jess if you didn't see it yet, go back and watch the recording when it's available to see Dr. Jeff Andresen's presentation that he gave earlier today about the climatological record. And just looking here at this just like this is just mind-boggling to me and probably to probably to climate climatologists all over the place. That period, 2013-2020. So much wetter than the, our recorded history is to is just fascinating to me. In that period, we had the wettest one year, the wettest 2-year, the wettest, three, four. You can see it there. For that entire eight-year period, there's never been a wetter 1234567 or eight year period in our recorded history. So just keep that in mind whenever we're looking at things like these charts that only started in 2014. And then any of the other data that might be have been shown earlier today that all started in 2014. If water levels weren't going up at that time, that would be probably pretty indicative of some kind of serious effect on the resource that we would be having. So just keep that in mind. How much wetter it has been recently during this period of record that we've got all these charts that have been shown here today. So bottom line, does Prairie River have an ARI likely to due to streamflow reduction? Is this thing going to go to court where the state tries to sue water users? Absolutely not. There's just absolutely no data to support that. That's clear. So what about the last scenario that'll kinda cover here, like an ARI has occurred. The only way you can say that an ARI has occurred is by the fish population. So you can see an ARI is likely to occur by streamflow, but you have to say it by the fish population in order to actually state that an ARI  has occurred. So we're saying the fish were once more abundant. Now they're less abundant or we've just reduced flow, pass that 25%. That's the other caveat. You can say it by stream flow if it's greater than a 25% flow reduction. Same story, EGLE can't do anything. Same story, new site-specific reviews would have to be denied. And same story. EGLE could file a civil lawsuit against folks who are knowingly knowingly causing the ARI. I'll get me I think I am going way too slow cover. I got talking too much here. I'm gonna go fast. Site-specific review process. So the things that we review during a site-specific reivew the things that we look at, say specific review - geology. Certainly a huge portion of it for well well new well proposed wells. Of course. We're gonna look at all the area well logs, including all the household. They actually primarily it's gonna be household wells because that's what we have most data from. Streamflow. We're going to confirm that the best we can, that we have a good accurate the best accurate streamflow record we can. Or if there's a gauge record, of course, what would that? Not many gauges out there are we using the best fit model has been talking about how we can use different models. If one is more suitable to that area and if we had the data to support using that model, return flow to the watershed, the water withdrawal assessment, which does that  automatically think that any water is going back to the watershed. During site-specific review, we always consider that check previous registrations just to make sure that they were actually installed and installed the way and operate the way that they were registered for that kind of thing. Check for non perennial stream segments and getting them to run out of time here, unfortunately, but yes, that's a portion of the review also. And you can see hopefully you'll understand that most of what we do is like an accounting audit. That's how I like to think about the regulations and site-specific review. There's just not a whole lot of room for a judgment call where one person would would come up with one decision or conclusion and another person will come up with something completely different. It's not the way it works. It's just, it's by design. And thankfully, so to be honest with you, um, thankfully, so that is not the way the system is set up. If there's sufficient funds in the account we pass, withdraw gets passed. What if it doesn't pass? What if it gets to Zone D after a site specific review, an SSR, one option is to go out and collect hydrogeologic data. So this would be like if you would do this with a goal in mind to identify different characteristics of the aquifor the geology than what we had used in the water withdrawal assessment tool. And you would only be doing this if you thought it would. The different characteristics that are out there would reduce the impact of the stream. So it's possible that it could be could go the other way where the actual situation at that specific site would cause more streamflow depletion based on the date of this collection that is possible. You would need to hire a specialized consultant in order to do this, collect the data. They might be doing an aquifor test, also called like an aquifor pump test or an aquifor  performance test. I like performance best its my favorite. Aquifor  performance test is just basically a way of measuring how water well water moves through the material more or less. Like I say, there is no guarantee that if you could do this work, that the predicted impact, would be reduced. So that's an important thing to keep in mind. We really don't want folks going out there and spending money on this type of work if it's not going to help them, unless you're just really generous, magnanimous, want to share that with the state to make better decisions in the future, then feel free by all means. But I really recommend either contact EGLE, we are going to give you a straight answer if we think that it's likely it's tricky business, right? Because we don't want to be blamed if you go out and it doesn't work out. They don't want to make light of that in any way whatsoever because these are expensive data to collect here, but Give you our best assessment, our best guess on whether it might help or hurt or what have you or obviously contact a pro that third party professional out there. So what is going on here? Like many folks who are astute legal water rights students out there maybe like, Well, how is this? This is in direct contrast to riparian rights and my right to use water on my property? Of course, you'd be right. That's what the legislature is set up here. So what what are your options? There were other options besides collecting that data. I'll just lead right off the bat. Maybe you could file a lawsuit against the state. I think you'd be challenging the law, potentially say it's unconstitutional or whatever. I'm no lawyer. None of this is legal advice. Please don't don't ever think that. But maybe it'd be challenging, challenging that loss. And the takings of property values are property rights or unconstitutional in some way. Or the lawsuit might just challenge that EGLE has done our work poorly done, done their work probably to assess these withdrawals and so forth. I am not a lawyer again I'm not giving legal advice, but from what I research and gather because I'm a geek about this stuff, I'm interested in it. It's a very, I'm not trying to discourage anyone from doing this either, but it's a very tall order to have a court overturn a law that has been put in place by a legislature, that it happens. It doesn't happen often. It's possible, but it's a tall order for the court to say, I know better. Maybe it's one judge, right? I know better than what all the whole legislature that enacted this law into place did. And EGLE on our part. I will say, I am very confident, don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but I'm very confident that the work we've done has been in compliance with the law. Every every point at every decision we've ever made has been in compliance with the law. So what you'd be challenging that we maybe not just so much that we did it wrong or did it poorly, but then we did it not in compliance with what the law says. I just would caution anyone who's out there thinking that they were really terrible at our jobs and going rogue or something that's really not the case. I'll talk about it with you some other time. You might. So this is the ugliest side we've mentioned. It could be a lawsuit against other water users. This would be a civil matter. It's basically a property rights dispute saying that their their prior registrations or prior withdrawals have blocked blocked you and a new latecomer from being able to have to exercise their water rights, which they still have. That is still the foundation in Michigan is you have a right to use water on your property. You just might have to fight for it is what the legislature is put in place. The litigation, if either of these things ever happened, would be based on these kind of reasonable use participation principles. I think I've left myself no time to talk about those, but water users Committee, we're going to talk a little bit more about that same idea. The whole point of water use this committee is is to do exactly what would have to be done during a reasonable use and fair participation litigation case. But to do it without the lawyers, hopefully, obviously for much cheaper without legal legal delays and lawyers and all of these things are of course unknown and test yet hasn't happened yet. None of them none of them had tried water users committing it leads me right into that. Sure. What else to say about these? There is some talk about whether or not these, there will be more likely to be coming soon because our watersheds they're coming up to that zone D limit in more and more and more places. None have been formed yet formally anyway, there's, none of them are doing the work that is kinda thought about here. They could self organize at anytime. Obviously, a water user committee could have done this in sort of a preventative pre-planning way. In making room for a new water user. They can do that on their own. Hasn't happened for probably a pretty obvious reasons. And as mentioned earlier, if, if EGLE has reasonable scientifically based evidence that an ARI is likely, then we're required by law to convene a water uses committee. I've received since we haven't done that yet, we're not really sure that we have this reasonable or I shouldn't say we're not sure. We don't have any clear, reasonable, scientifically-based evidence that ARIs are occurring out there at any given location. If these things were ever to be successful, they would they would obviously require like an extraordinary, uncommon amount of cooperation and just generosity from water users committee to work on its own? Okay. The enforcement side of things here yep. Going to talk about that. I promised we would. So part three, I'm not going to talk about anything that has to do with like wetlands, lakes, or streams violations like putting those dams in the river without a permit. Any activities that might disturb the bed or banks not going to talk about those. That's not our program, that's not what's in part 327. That's just shorthand name for the law. What I'm talking about is more like unregistered withdrawals. Withdrawals that are installed and operated differently than registered, or a failure to report water use on an annual basis, or even potentially falsified report reports. So unregistered withdrawals. Obviously, if they're unregistered, I think it should be clear to everyone that you have that withdrawal has no legal authorization to operate. So every time that pump is turned on, it's a violation of law. I would recommend contacting EGLE immediately to register any unregistered withdrawals kinda hanging out there. It's in your best interests to do so. Like the longer you wait, potentially, the harder it might be like there's still hope to be able to register withdrawal. If you try now. If we wait longer, there may not be that opportunity. Yeah, It gets harder as time passes for this. If you just think back to the progression of the maps, it gets tighter as time progresses. And of course there's there's continually discovery. That's the job ELGE and of MDARD to see you all there. Here's a withdrawal, has never seen it before, and it's not registered and so forth. So it just everyday everyday we find them unfortunately, installed and operated differently. Same story. If it's installed, constructed, or operated differently than it was registered for it, there's no legal authorization to operate that withdrawal. It's illegal every time it turns on. Same story, contact, EGLE immediately. Same story. Some well, drillers have taken on this responsibility for their client meaning like they will literally give us a call from the field and say, we need to move this well, or we need to install a shallower casing deeper is always better. If you go deeper, it's going to it's only going to improve your situation, but it you go  shallower than it may potentially have more impact on surface water. They'll call us right from the site and I literally like we will try and drop everything. one of our staff could be me, sometimes they do, sometimes they call me or my coworkers, like literally will basically drop everything and try and get them in the answer asap. Because it is a requirement of law. I guess it kinda failed to mention that if it is installed or operated differently, especially installed particularly if the well ends up being different than what it was registered for. It is a requirement of law for that property owner to go back and correct. Fix that registration and make it match to the as-built characteristics. Failure to report false reports That's pretty obvious. Each violation for all these things can be penalized up to $1,000. That is, that is not our favorite or even remotely interested way of going about doing things. I want to make that clear. So on the enforcement side of things, we do have one staff position that's dedicated to compliance, investigation, communication, and resolution. Other staff will do portions of that work also and help out. We have one dedicated staff that does that. Almost exclusively. Simple violations are resolved unilaterally. If it's easy, simple, we can fix it, we will do that and then send a follow-up communication to the property owner saying, Hey, we fixed this for you, let you know you it was really your job, you're supposed to do that, but we were able to take care of it for you. Others will require some kind of formal compliance communication. Just saying, Hey, we got a problem here. Needs to be fixed. If that if it's still unresolved at that point of violation, notice can be sent. That'll be formal. That'll be by mail. If it's still unresolved, a second violation notice. If it's still unresolved, the case may be referred to what's called the escalated enforcement reviewed team here in EGLE. That team can decide whether to escalate it, kinda, kinda go harder on it, or just to stay the course and see if we can't get compliance. If escalated an enforcement notice will be sent by mail. And then the resolution and the resolution will be some kind of a settlement agreement that avoids the court costs, avoids going to court. And that's been negotiated and signed agreement by both the responsible party, I guess. And then we've had we've done probably this is kind of a guess. There's not a real great way to keep track of this. Maybe 4,200, at the very least, simple violations have been resolved by EGLE  unilaterally, probably 3,000 or so compliance communications. The point being here that that very few registrations are corrected when they after they after they are installed and operated and most of them are most of them are out of compliance until they get fixed. 94 violation notices 19 second violation, one escalated enforcement case that's been brought up here by Lyndon earlier today. I did want to talk about that he asked me to and I think it's a great idea because of just to dispel or quell any rumors  that might be out there or how wind or whatever. That case started back in 2016. When the first violation notice was sent for an irrigation well that exceeded it's registered capacity and was pumping more water than it was registered for. Jump ahead to, I can't exactly speak to all what was happening here, but just rest assured that in-between each one of the dates that I'm showing here, there was multiple communications going back and forth. I'm trying to try to get this sorted out. Compliance communications sent in 2019, 2020, a violation notice was sent for five additional unregistered wells plus that first well, got a second violation notice. 2020, met with the property owner and a consultant that he had retained later that year. Further discussion, discussing the actual technical side of things, streamflow, depletion analysis, site-specific review, letter, blah, blah. What I'm saying here is this kind of a situation does not come by quickly, easily or lightly. It was there was untold number of communications back-and-forth and time spent by our staff. To get to this point that eventually ended up with yes, in April 2022 a settlement agreement was signed. It was not forced. The word used earlier was forced. That is not true. It was signed by both the producer and EGLE that resolved the violations. The way that it was a resolved was some withdrawals had to be reduced, so their impact was used to make room for his other withdrawals. Withdrawals had baseline capacity that they could use to credit towards the new withdrawals. And there was a the unfortunate $30,000 fine that was sort of a combination, or adding up of all the fines over a six-year period of time, almost. That's what that's what the enforcement unit , Escalated Enforcement team or Enforcement Unit team came up with there and that's what was there. I really want to make the point though that throughout this whole thing, both sides, both sides, EGLE  and the producer, we really maintained a good professional relationship throughout. Still have that today. I talked with the producer just on Friday, but let them know that I'm just going to talk about this and I know you want it to go away as soon as possible, but I was asked to talk about it. So here we are addressing it. But yeah, we still have that good relationship. There was there was there was unfortunate that it dragged down this law and got to this point that it had to happen. There was good cooperation along way, but not on all these some of the harder points, of course, these unregistered withdrawals and wells that couldn't be registered because there was not enough legally available water to register them. There's just some unwillingness to concede on that point for awhile there. And that's how we ended up with this at this juncture. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. I went a little long there. I hope it wasn't too fast. But if you have ever any questions or concerns, complaints, I take them all the worst, the complaint that better. I want to hear them. Give me your questions, let me know or contact anyone else in the program. That's my contact information, but feel free to contact anyone else in the program to. We have a couple of questions. We don't have any we don't turn into pumpkins, so we don't have a hard deadline here. Do you want to take a stab at those? Can you see them? How to water user groups compare too groups like midwest water stewards? Could farmers form groups to advocate for themselves that aren't regulated by EGLE? Or does EGLE have to be involved in any group farmer would farmers would form regarding their water rights? Lyndon, did you say, Did you say that you want Todd  to answer that or did you just want me to know? That's all you. Okay. All right. I heard you start off with Todd. Yeah. So EGLE definitely does not have to be involved. The role that EGLE  would play in a water users committee would be to basically to provide the data. Obviously, we receive it, receives that we receive it, we could provide the withdrawal data. There are some restrictions on sharing that we'd have to get some agreement that folks that want to share that we wouldn't be there just to basically facilitate a meeting, provide all the background data about the water uses there. If everyone didn't bring it on their own. And maybe to provide some logistics, I guess to coordinate and organize the thing and help them help them function. But yeah, EGLEs, we do not have to be there. Groups like midwest water stewards. They kind of they basically are doing some of the work of a water user committee. They're not taking that final step that the legislature, I guess envisioned where they're making making modifications to withdrawals or  making room for a new person to come in because because there's not enough legally available water obviously none of those steps have been taken. So it's not it's not the full embodiment of a water user committee in the way that it water in a way that the legislature envisioned it. But yeah, they're doing a lot of the same work as far as planning and in collecting data that that would be very useful or crucial to a successful water users committee proceedings and so forth. So the other question I see here, if I read it, it says, what is the withdrawal level again, needed to register and combinations of properties. Think we're talking about the 70 gallons a minute? Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. So 70 gallons per minute in combined pump capacity on a parcel of property. So that's an that's not spelled out word for word in law, just says a property owner has to combine all withdrawals on that property is the exact wording in the law. So we assume that means a parcel of property, although if you had two adjacent parcels, you know, it's kinda the same thing so you know, it can get tricky. The best answer is gonna be on a case-by-case basis. We have to decide whether you're combining withdrawals or not. Basically the idea would be that you can't nickel and dime to stay under the radar. You can't just put in a bunch of small wells that eventually add up to 70 or more or something like that and be scot-free. The legislature legislation, legislature wrote legislation that very clearly tries to prevent that kind of thing from happening. So pretty common. One is in livestock facilities to put two wells in for safety reasons. And so like 50 gallon a minute wells, you would consider that to be a withdrawal over 70 gallons a minute, Correct? Yep. Yep. It's based on capacity. I might have skipped that part, So yeah. Just just based on that pump capacity. So you just total up that capacity even if they're never intended to be used at the same time? If they could theoretically, they could be both turned on or something like that. Yes. So we're going to look at the total capacity. Okay. I don't see any other questions. I want to thank you, Andy. I really appreciate it. I think we got over a lot of territory that people had questions about. Obviously, there's gonna be some differences in opinion of what should happen and what why we're here. But I think you really served as a good thing for the farm and ag community. Talking about it and getting through some of the questions. Yeah, you bet. Happy to do it, happy to take any other questions anytime.