ABSTRACT
On a hot summer day in September 1995, the residents of a small community located in the western highlands of New Jersey, watched in horror as one of the town’s favorite waterways rolling past their municipal building, abruptly ceased flowing. While the small trout and other resident fish life sought refuge in what few deep pools remained, the town’s leaders began to search for clues to this unprecedented event. The state had been experiencing a severe shortage of rainfall but certainly not a record shortage. By nightfall, however, much to the surprise of the town’s residents, the stream suddenly began flowing again. Then on the following morning, the stream again stopped flowing. This alternating pattern of cessation and flow continued for several days, until an astute town employee recognized the correlation of this erratic stream flow with the commencement and cessation of irrigation on an upstream golf course that directly abutted the affected waterway. The golf course had been permitted to withdraw up to 100,000 gallons per day (GPD) of groundwater to keep its fairways green and healthy. While no scientific study was ever undertaken to prove a direct cause and effect relationship, when the golf course was requested to halt its irrigation operations for several days, the stream flow remained continuous. The problem was eventually corrected with the return of more normal rainfall patterns. However, the incident clearly demonstrated the complex interrelationships between various components of a waterway ecosystem and our continued failure to recognize such interrelationships and to provide an adequate level of protection for the maintenance of their integrity. In all likelihood, the golf course was probably just one of many final straws for this water body. For the prior quarter century, new residential subdivisions had been constructed in both the headwaters and primary recharge areas of the small waterway; as a result of the placement of new and impervious roadways, roofs, and driveways, along with the installation of interceptor and storm drains and the withdrawal of groundwater through a myriad of individual wells, less and less recharge of the groundwater was taking place. Because stored and later discharging groundwater is often the primary source of water to a surface water body when there is no rainfall, the underlying aquifer had diminishing amounts of water to give up to the surface stream, especially during stressful drought periods. The system had lost its normal resiliency. Whether the irrigation pumps actually prevented flowing groundwater from reaching and recharging the diminished stream flow or was conversely sucking water back from the streambed itself, can be determined only by further scientific studies — none of which have been proposed at this time.
