Every good tool needs to be proverbially sharpened every now and then. Michigan’s Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) department has done this with the state’s key water tool.
On Sept. 22, the EGLE previewed the state’s updated Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool (WWAT) to the public. Updates to the tool will be available for public use as of Wednesday, Sept. 24.
“Anyone who wants to register a water withdrawal in the state of Michigan has to use the Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool,” explains Lena Pappas, manager of EGLE’s groundwater and geological services section, who spoke to The Packer before the Sept. 22 preview event.
Presenting at the event, Hannah Arnett, a member of EGLE’s water use assessment unit, explained that WWAT is a screening tool that estimates the impact of a proposed water withdrawal on the local streams.
“The WWAT also acts as an accounting system which allows EGLE to track water use and identify cumulative estimate impacts from the registered water use for each watershed,” Arnett added.
About the WWAT
Michigan water use is regulated under a number of agreements. Key among these are the Great Lakes Charter — a 1985 agreement between the U.S. states and Canadian provinces that depend on the Great Lakes’ watersheds — and the Great Lakes Agreement and Compact. In general, these agreements require that water consumption in the Great Lakes’ watersheds must be managed to conserve the “precious public natural resources” that are the water resources of the Great Lakes Basin, as the charter says.
The WWAT was deployed in 2008 as part of Michigan abiding by these various agreements. Anyone in the state who wants to initiate a new or increased large quantity withdrawal — defined as having the capacity to withdraw 100,000 gallons per day or more (i.e. a pump capacity of 70 gallons per minute or more) — has to register with EGLE by using the WWAT before they begin the withdrawal. The tool is way to get these water users a quick assessment on if their proposed withdrawal will negatively impact the watershed.
“The statute actually requires us to have a determination back to people within 10 days and so the tool was an essential part of making that piece work,” Pappas explains.
She adds that the tool and the agreements that helped create it were put in place before the need actually occurred.
“We had the benefit of being able to see some of the issues that had come up in other places,” she says, referencing more arid states like California and Texas, where international and interstate water sharing agreements are older. These older agreements were based on water conditions that no longer exist and have massive impact on the states’ agricultural water use.
“We could watch what was happening in other places and build around anticipated developments,” Pappas adds. “I think we just had the benefit of being further in the line.”
However, the WWAT has not been updated since 2014.
“The original tool was kind of a first-generation pass, and so then as the internet and everything has evolved, we wanted to be able to update it to bring it in line with current technology,” Pappas says.
Updates and Transparency
The updates to the 17-year-old tool aim to bring it up to date with current Michigan security guidelines and increase the transparency between EGLE and the state’s water users. However, not much will change in terms of functionality, Pappas says.
“The tool uses specific stream depletion algorithms, essentially, to estimate what the impact to resources would be,” she says. “That piece is going to stay very much the same.”
The first change users may experience is the need to log in via MiLogin before using the WWAT, as well as user interface updates that provide more options. Most substantial, however, will be the increased transparency, according to EGLE staff involved with the update.
“In addition to a more modern look, this update brings the ability to share state tools with water users,” Arnett says.
Some of the transparency includes the ability to see the current state of various watersheds, other withdrawal registrations in the area, and see increased granularity of data about an area. WWAT users will also be able to input site-specific parameters like transmissivity and storativity “for a more flexible and transparent assessment.”
“These changes have been made in response to recommendations in the 2020 report by the Water Use Advisory Council to share publicly the WWAT data on registrations, their individual impacts, and cumulative impacts,” Arnett explains. “EGLE has also gone a step farther and is sharing aquifer data and hydrological data in the WWAT as well.”
The current update that will be available to the public Sept. 24 is the first of two. The second update release, planned for early next year, will give the public access to two additional depletion estimate systems, one focused on confined aquifers and another focused on layered aquifers.
“The biggest goal is we are trying to be more transparent, showing you guys the data we are using when we are running registrations,” Arnett says.
Updates to the WWAT were tested in the major browsers of Edge, Chrome and Firefox, and the developers say common browser extensions should not hamper the tool’s functionality. They urge users to report any problems they might experience to WaterUseProgram@Michigan.gov.
