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Home>Our Watershed>Threats To Clean Water Threats to Clean WaterDevelopment The same natural resources, which sustain the community, are coming under pressure to support increased activity and development. Development and development’s “associated infrastructure” threaten both aquatic and terrestrial wildlife habitat and other components of environmental quality. Stresses include habitat fragmentation and destruction, altered hydrological processes, and increased pathogens, nutrients, and toxins along the shoreline and other riparian areas.
Water Contamination The Les Cheneaux watershed continues to meet minimum water quality goals set forth in the Federal Clean Water Act and Michigan’s Designated Uses for surface water. However, the Luce-Mackinac-Alger-Schoolcraft (LMAS) Environmental Health Department has documented several cases of bacterial contamination in on-site drinking water wells, but a moratorium on installing new wells in the contaminated shallow aquifers has halted that direct impairment. Unfortunately, many existing homes still rely on shallow wells and older non-compliant on-site septic systems (OSS) as well as use surface water intakes for water supplies, and these residents are in danger of bacterial contamination of their drinking and total/partial body contact use of water. The threat also exists that deeper wells, now mandated by LMAS, could become contaminated if careful consideration is not afforded to the inherent characteristics of the watershed that facilitated the contamination of the shallower aquifers. On-Site Septic Systems Archaic, non-compliant OSS still exist throughout the watershed, including many shoreline properties that are close to the water table and marginal in effectiveness at accommodating wastes. The Les Cheneaux watershed area is part of the Niagaran Escarpment, and much of the project area is characterized by Karst topography.
Karst is defined as a type of topography that is formed over limestone, dolomite, or gypsum by dissolving or solution, and is characterized by closed depressions or sinkholes, caves, and underground drainage and cracked bedrock at the grounds surface. The accompanying lack of deep filtering soils keep Les Cheneaux waters quite susceptible to contamination from surface and subsurface non-point sources of pollution, including these OSS. Migration of these wastes into surface and ground waters affects both drinking water and total/partial body contact recreation.
Degredation of Sensitive Areas The Les Cheneaux area’s fishery and other aquatic wildlife depend on coastal marshes and stable littoral environments to survive. Activity on or near shore, consequently, results in increasing evidence of pollutants, including boat fuels, sediments from dredging and prop wash, and habitat degradation from building site preparation and other development requirements.
Eutrophication Both the fishery and ability to navigate in Cedarville Bay are both threatened by accelerated eutrophication, hastened by nutrient loading from both point and non-point sources along Cedarville’s waterfront properties.
This page last updated on 5/13/2008.
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P.O.Box 578 | Cedarville, Michigan 49719
Phone: 906-484-3031
Phone: 906-484-3031
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