Groundwater levels rising in Bellevue area

From Staff Reports
The Huron County Gen­eral Health Dis­trict has been mon­i­tor­ing ground­wa­ter lev­els in the Belle­vue area…and they are ris­ing due to increased snow melt fol­lowed by the heavy spring rains.
The health dis­trict says ground­wa­ter lev­els in the Belle­vue area have risen over 50 feet in the last two months. As of June 2, the cur­rent ground­wa­ter level was 2.18 feet below land sur­face. This could lead to flood­ing.
His­tor­i­cally, ground­wa­ter flood­ing is not new to the Belle­vue area. There have been 6 mas­sive flood­ing events in and around Belle­vue since 1800. The most recent flood­ing event occurred in 2008.
For the months of Jan­u­ary through May, the National Oceanic and Atmos­pheric Admin­is­tra­tion, Toledo sta­tion reported 21.56 inches of pre­cip­i­ta­tion, up 8.75 inches from nor­mal.
Ground­wa­ter comes from rain, snow, sleet, and hail that absorbs into the ground. Water moves down into the ground because of grav­ity, pass­ing between par­ti­cles of soil, sand, gravel, or rock until it reaches a depth where the ground is filled, or sat­u­rated, with water. Once the water reaches the sat­u­rated level, the water table will rise, increas­ing the chance of ground­wa­ter flood­ing.
The Belle­vue area is geo­log­i­cally unique. Belle­vue sits atop an under­ground water­shed made of Karst lime­stone filled with frac­tures or chan­nels rang­ing in diam­e­ter from 1 inch to sev­eral feet. The chan­nels direct water below the sur­face. Frac­tures may be con­nected east to west but are nor­mally con­nected north to south which accounts for why some areas flood while neigh­bor­ing areas do not.
When the ground­wa­ter in the area can­not escape, ulti­mately into Lake Erie, because the vol­ume of water is too great, it backs up.
“Think of it as a fun­nel,” said Tim Hollinger, Huron County Health Com­mis­sioner. “If water is being poured into the top end of the fun­nel faster than it can escape from the bot­tom, the water will back up and start to pour out of the top.”
Essen­tially, the Karst lime­stone becomes the escape valve or path of least resis­tance where the ground­wa­ter escapes cre­at­ing the ground­wa­ter flood­ing in and around Belle­vue.
Com­mon flood­ing con­cerns include water infil­tra­tion in base­ments, indoor mold issues, haz­ardous dri­ving con­di­tions, water-borne ill­nesses and well and sep­tic sys­tem prob­lems. In prepa­ra­tion for a flood, home­own­ers should remove fur­ni­ture and valu­ables from the base­ment and check the sump-pump. Also, flood water may con­tain harm­ful bac­te­ria so res­i­dents are encour­aged to advise their chil­dren to not play in flood water. High waters on road­ways can be decep­tive; it only takes a few inches of water to cause dri­vers to lose con­trol of their vehi­cle. Do not drive through pools of water on the road.
Addi­tional pre­cau­tions need to be taken by home­own­ers that have well and/or sewage sys­tems. Those pre­cau­tions can be viewed on the Huron County Gen­eral Health Dis­trict web­site at www.huroncohealth.com under Huron Health News.
For real-time data on the cur­rent ground­wa­ter level, visit http://waterdata.usgs.gov/oh/nwis/uv/?site_no=411819082493900.
For more infor­ma­tion on flood prepa­ra­tion and reme­di­a­tion, visit http://emergency.cdc.gov/disasters/floods/

Posted by Brian Liskai on Jun 3 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.