Butler County is one of 32 members of a water roundtable committee formed last year by the Dayton Development Coalition, a regional organization focused on development, to promote water related development, technology and stewardship of the area worldwide.
The plan will be presented at the next roundtable meeting Wednesday, Sept. 15, at MillerCoors Brewery in Trenton for how to capitalize on the water asset, according to Maureen Patterson, vice president of stakeholder relations of the coalition.
“It’ll help attract businesses that use it, and we’ll attract companies that want to help protect it as well because it’s to their benefit,” Juengling said.
The aquifer is a two- to three-mile wide bowl of water underground that stretches north from Logan County to the Ohio River. It is high quality because of natural filtration from sand and gravel, and replenishes itself with rain, said Tim McLelland, Groundwater Consortium manager.
The members of the Hamilton to New Baltimore Area Groundwater Consortium pump an average of 62 million gallons of water a day, McLelland said. Members include Greater Cincinnati Water Works, Hamilton, Fairfield, Southwest Regional Water District, Southwest Ohio Water Company, MillerCoors and Butler County Water and Sewer. Yet since the consortium was created in 1967, the water levels have not dropped and it’s the consortium’s job to keep it that way.
Still, the aquifer is used at about a third of its potential. According to a 1962 study, there is an average of 300 million gallons of water available a day, McLelland said. That means there’s room for “appropriate” development regulated to protect the natural resource.
“Everybody has a stake in this to be protective of the source,” he said.
McLelland also said the aquifer is probably one of the most productive in the U.S. in terms of its ability to replenish itself. The average precipitation is 30 to 40 inches a year. Other parts of the country have less precipitation and the aquifers are deeper, sometimes 400 or 500 feet.
This aquifer is more easily accessible at 35 to 40 feet down on average.
MillerCoors Brewery located here almost 20 years ago because of access to high quality water, said Julian Green, a Miller-Coors spokesman.
“Water is the lifeblood of our business,” Green said.
Even though there aren’t any prospects now, Juengling says the county’s four biggest assets — water, access to Interstate 75, school systems and available land — hold promise.
“I don’t think we’ve seen the full benefit of it yet. It is to come,” Juengling said.
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