Greenbrier River Watershed Association

Drew Tanner
Staff Writer
Pocahontas Times
     State and local officials, scientists and public health workers gathered last week in Lewisburg to discuss the difficulties of “growing communities on karst.”
     The workshop was particularly timely, given the current controversy in Slaty Fork regarding the location of a sewer plant that will serve Snowshoe Mountain Resort and the surrounding area.
     Experts at the conference talked about more than just sewage, however. Growing development, stormwater management, farming on karst and public policy filled the workshop’s two-day agenda.
     But just what exactly is karst?
     Karst terrain is characterized by the presence of caves, sinkholes, sinking streams, large springs and thin soil cover formed from rock such as limestone.
     In the eastern U.S., a band of karst terrain extends from Alabama up to New York, cutting through eastern West Virginia on its way.
     Geologic maps show a spine of karst terrain extending through Pocahontas County along the Greenbrier River and at the Elk River headwaters around Slaty Fork.
     While plentiful water from springs helped draw early settlers to the Greenbrier River Valley and the upper Elk River, challenges have arisen as communities have grown over the karst landscapes.
     What it all boils down to, so to speak, is drinking water. In karst areas, what spills onto the ground or into a sinkhole can wind up coming out of your tap in just a short time.
     In fact, researchers who use non-toxic dye to trace water flowing into sinkholes often look for — and find — the dye in peoples’ toilet tanks, according to George Dasher, of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Groundwater Program.
     “Toilet tanks are one of the best places to put dye traps,” Dasher said.
     In other types of rock and soil, it might take water up to a year to travel a few feet, said hydrologist William Jones, of the Karst Waters Institute in Charles Town.
     In karst areas, water can travel more than a mile in just a day, Jones said.
     That means that anything that can be carried by water — spilled fuel, agricultural or parking lot runoff, or liquid from a failing septic system — can wind up reaching the water table before the leak is even detected on the surface, Jones explained.
     “I try to tell people, ‘don’t put anything on the land’s surface that you don’t want in your drinking water,’” Jones said.
     Conference speakers agreed that it was unreasonable to ban growth altogether in karst areas. Instead, Jones, Dasher and others provided insight into minimizing the health and environmental hazards related to development on karst terrain.
     Using Lewisburg as an example, several of the speakers identified stormwater and agricultural runoff as areas where more work needs to be done.
     Both in town and in outlying commercial and residential development, stormwater is often directed into sinkholes, which provide a direct link to the groundwater. When the water passes over parking lots, it takes road salts, any spilled oil, fuel or antifreeze with it into the water table, explained Wil Orndorf, of the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.
     Improvements can be made to sinkholes, like filling them with varying grades of gravel to help filter some of the pollutants, according to Orndorf. Even with such improvements, the sinkholes must be monitored; often the fill material settles or falls further into the hole as water rushes through it.
     The problem is often compounded, Orndorf said, when a sinkhole receives increasing amounts of water from parking lots, washing away soil and rock from the sinkhole, causing it to become larger or even collapse.
     The opposite can also happen. Stormwater carrying lots of sediment can clog sinkholes and the passages into which they empty, resulting in flooding during heavy rain.
     Orndorf gave several recommendations for minimizing the impact of stormwater on sinkholes, from monitoring their physical condition, using dye tests to determine which springs or streams might be fed by a sinkhole to minimizing the amount of water that is diverted or rerouted to a sinkhole.
     Along similar lines, Doug Boyer, a researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reviewed ways that farmers on karst land could head off groundwater contamination.
     In karst areas, farmers find themselves with a double-edged sword, Boyer said. The land tends to be very productive, but the risks of groundwater contamination are substantially increased.
     Neighboring Greenbrier County is known for karst features like Organ Cave and Lost World Caverns, but with 30,000 head of cattle, it also leads the state in beef production, Boyer said.
     Similarly, Hillsboro, the Little Levels and communities farther up the Greenbrier River Valley are home to some of Pocahontas County’s most productive farms, while they also have an abundance of springs and caves.
     When it comes to the groundwater in those areas, Boyer said the levels of nitrates and fecal coliform bacteria are directly proportionate to the amount of karst land being used for agriculture.
     In Greenbrier County, Boyer found people who got their water from springs and wells had higher rates of infection from E. coli, crytosporidium and giardia in areas with high concentrations of cattle.
     All three cause severe diahrrea and stomach cramps and are passed through the stool of warmblooded animals. E. coli is a type of bacteria, while cryptosporidium and giardia are microspic parasites that live in the intestines of their hosts.
     Even as early as the 19th century, Boyer said he found records indicating the spread of typhoid through groundwater on and around farms.
     To prevent similar outbreaks, Boyer has worked with farmers in the area to fence sinkholes off from grazing cattle, to move feedlots away from sinkholes and advised farmers against spreading manure, poultry litter or other fertilizers near sinkholes.
     Echoing Jones’ words from earlier in the day, Boyer noted that what ends up in a sinkhole can quickly turn up in a person’s well.
     The same is true, of course, with human waste.
     Rick Eades, of the Canaan Valley Institute, presented several alternatives to the conventional septic system. Human waste not only carries coliform bacteria, but also provides a way for medications and personal care products to enter the groundwater, Eades explained.
     A study conducted in 2001 by the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Geological Survey found pharmaceuticals in all of the karst water sources they sampled, said Eades.
     In some extreme cases, Eades said, the antidepressant Prozac was found in bluegills in Texas, while West Virginia male bass in Petersburg were found to be carrying eggs, due to elevated hormone levels in the water.
     While no federal regulations exist for taking medications out of human waste before it leaves a sewage treatment plant or septic system drain field, Eades said carbon filters have been found to be effective in their removal.
     Keeping pollutants out of cave systems isn’t just for human safety, added Orndorf. Sometimes the critters living in the caves have as much legal status as the people who are pouring pollutants in or getting drinking water out, he joked. A few federally listed threatened or endangered species live in Virginia’s and West Virginia’s caves, including three species of bats and insect-like animals such as the Madison Cave isopod.
     The array of specially adapted bats, bugs and other creatures in the area’s caves is dizzying. Pocahontas County has more cave-dwelling aquatic species — 12 total — than all counties in the country except Hays County, Texas, and Edmonson County, Kentucky. That number, of course, does not include bats that hibernate in the caves or animals that live on the cave floor.
     Keeping the people above and cave-dwelling creatures below happy and healthy on karst terrain takes a delicate balance of education, regulation and monitoring, said Jesse Richardson, a professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Virginia Tech.
     Looking at karst communities from Springfield, Missouri, to Clarke County, Virginia, Richardson found that even today, few rural communities have regulations in place to manage growth on karst terrain.
     Even in Virginia, only nine counties have ordinances regarding development on karst terrain. Among West Virginia counties, the issue has hardly been addressed, Richardson said.
     “Urban areas are more likely to meaningfully regulate land use in karst,” he said, “while rural localities often fail to regulate at all or have insignificant regulation.”
     “Rural, but growing, localities face the biggest issues,” Richardson said. In many instances, regulations are only put in place after development has already begun to affect water quality.
     Leslee McCarty, of the Greenbrier River Watershed Association, agreed.
     “It’s not a real obvious problem, because it’s not there in your face,” McCarty said.
     In fact, McCarty felt the issue was serious enough that the watershed association, with a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, brought the conference to the area.
     The first “Growing Communities on Karst” workshop was held in Shepherdstown.
     “Our main goal was to get county commissioners and city planners there,” McCarty said. The watershed association provided stipends for public officials to attend the conference.
     McCarty said the conference was part of a larger project funded by the educational grant from the EPA grant called, “Water: Everybody’s business.”
     County Commissioner Reta Griffith had a commission meeting for the first day of the conference, but was able to attend the second day’s presentations on wastewater and planning.
     “I went to learn more about the karst topography part of it and broaden my own definition of it,” Griffith said.
     Griffith said she was somewhat relieved to hear experts and state officials say it was possible to develop on karst land.
     “We’re not going to stop development,” she said.