As a growing number of breaches in the Memphis Sand Aquifer threatens Shelby County’s drinking water, an obscure government board is recommending an increase in private well permit fees for the first time in nearly four decades.
The county’s Groundwater Quality Control Board voted last week to increase fees for private wells and septic tanks — the first such increase since the board was created in 1988.
Under the proposal, which still must be approved by the Shelby County Commission, the $100 annual permit fee for a private well would increase to $500. Other fees would rise by similar amounts.
The higher fees are needed to cover growing deficits in the cost of testing and monitoring private wells.
“By approving these permit fee increases, the groundwater board is taking a major step toward building the only groundwater protection program in the state of Tennessee,” said Sarah Houston, executive director of Protect Our Aquifer.
The seven-year-old nonprofit organization worked with the Shelby County Health Department to develop the proposal to increase fees.
“The need is there,” groundwater board chairman Chris Morrical said before the vote at last Thursday’s quarterly meeting.
Shelby County is punctured by hundreds of private wells that draw millions of gallons of water from the massive Memphis Sand Aquifer.
In 2018, the county health department’s water quality branch used its own lab to test 437 of those wells. In 2019, the branch tested 403.
Over the next four years, after closing its lab for lack of funding, the water branch used a private lab to test a combined total of 35 wells.
The private lab charges $275-$500 to test each well.
Private well owners who could access public water lines pay an annual permit fee of $100 per well. Well owners with no access to public water are exempt.
That amount hasn’t changed since the groundwater board was established in 1988.
“There were 60 private wells” when the board was formed, Sonja Owens, operations manager for the department’s pollution control section, told members of the county’s Groundwater Quality Control Board last week. “There are over 700 wells now. The (health department) can’t fulfill its duties with such limited funding.”
The Groundwater Board is made up of 11 men and women — utility representatives, a well driller, and community members. Its responsibilities include “a systematic analysis program for existing and new wells” in Shelby County.
Three employees of the health department’s water quality branch are responsible for providing that analysis on the hundreds of private wells and thousands of monitoring wells that dot the county.
MLGW and the county’s four other municipal utility companies are required by law to regularly monitor and test their own wells.
Shelby County is the only county in Tennessee with the authority to manage groundwater.
Regular testing of private wells has become more important than ever in recent years.
The Center for Applied Earth Science and Engineering Research (CAESER) at the University of Memphis and MLGW completed a 5-year, $5 million study of the Memphis Sands aquifer in 2023.
Prior to the study, there were six suspected breaches in the protective layer of clay overlying the aquifer.
The study confirmed the six breaches and identified 36 other suspected breaches.
It also detected “modern water” (less than 50 years old) in six of MLGW’s 10 wellfields. Breaches allow younger water of poorer quality to seep into the aquifer.
“We probably are looking at 70-plus, maybe 90 suspected breaches,” Brian Waldron, CAESER’s director, told The Commercial Appeal. “It’s not just a breach here, a breach there, it’s like Swiss cheese. And it’s not just the breaches, it’s the channels that connect them like a spiderweb.”
In addition to the breaches, there are approximately 200 known contaminated sites across Shelby County – 10 of them federally-recognized Superfund Sites in active remediation.
In 2001, for example, chromium was found in surface water near one of those sites in Collierville. A year later, Collierville officials found chromium in two of its water wells and took them offline.
“It is unclear how many (private) wells have been drilled or closed or abandoned in Shelby County,” Ward Archer, president of Protect Our Aquifer, and Scott Banbury, coordinator of the Sierra Club Tennessee Chapter, said in a statement before the board meeting.
“Shelby County needs to better understand and regulate these vulnerabilities to groundwater supplies, and the burden should be on those who want to use the aquifer to demonstrate that no harm will flow from their actions.”
Well permit fees generate about $130,000 annually, or about 40 percent of the health department’s water quality budget.
Meter fees (55 cents per water meter, collected by the utility companies) generate another $175,000 annually. The county’s general fund covers the rest.
The new water permit fees are expected to generate an extra $600,000 annually.
“The health department does need additional funding,” said Quinton Clark, who represents MLGW on the groundwater board.
The water fees cover a wide range of permits required to search for, build, operate, inspect, test, monitor, repair, and abandon private residential, commercial and industrial water wells.
Other fees cover permits to apply for, install, repair, and operate septic tanks.
The fee increases are designed to cover the actual costs of processing permits. Each site must be inspected visually, a process that often takes hours.
Additional revenue would be used to hire four more water branch employees — two environmental GIS specialists, a clerical specialist, and a data analyst to design, develop and maintain a geospatial database of all private water wells and monitoring wells in the county.
The extra revenue also would allow the health department to annually test about 700 private wells.
The biggest impact of the fee increases would be felt by the residents and businesses that have access to public water lines but choose to own private wells
In addition to increasing the annual well permit fee from $100 to $500, other proposed changes would increase:
- Water well application fees from $25 to $300.
- Water well search fees from $75 to $150.
- Annual monitoring well fees from $20 to $50 per well.
- Water well repair fees from $25 to $100-$300, depending on well type.
- Water well fill and abandonment fees from 0 to $100-$300, depending on well type.
