Industry Overuse Puts Capital City Drinking Water At Risk
Until about 10 years ago, the 86-year-old retired contractor was like most of his neighbors in the city’s leafy Southdowns neighborhood near Louisiana State University; he simply didn’t put much thought into the water flowing from his taps.
But then he went back to school and learned about hydrology and the movement of water underground. He got a master’s degree in climatology and wrote his thesis on the city’s freshwater supply.
“I became very concerned that the aquifer was in danger from saltwater intrusion,” said Town, who now leads Baton Rouge Citizens to Save Our Water Inc., a nonprofit fighting for more oversight of the water system.
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Five years before five members of a Baton Rouge-area groundwater commission were charged with conflict-of-interest violations, an attorney for the commission warned of exactly the problem that led to the charges, commission records show.
In mid-2015, former Assistant Attorney General Megan K. Terrell, then the groundwater commission s legal advisor, concluded that state ethics law could bar commissioners from drawing a salary from the big groundwater users they were supposed to regulate, like Baton Rouge Water and ExxonMobil.
The 18-member Capital Area Ground Water Conservation Commission manages the Southern Hills aquifer, the drinking water source for nearly 600,000 people in the Baton Rouge area. The aquifer also supplies industries, farms, cattle ranches and others.