Villages wise to consider lake water

Two more municipalities have joined the parade of Lake County communities looking into the possibility of obtaining Lake Michigan drinking water.

And why not?

Long-term problems associated with aquifers and wells as reliable sources are becoming increasingly evident.

Nowhere locally have the potential problems been on display more prominently than in Hawthorn Woods. There, 224 homeowners learned last year that the 20 wells on which they depend need a roughly $6 million overhaul. With that issue far from final resolution, Hawthorn Woods officials last week decided to spend $8,000 to study the feasibility of bringing Lake Michigan water to town. Officials in nearby Long Grove -- where residents rely on privately owned shallow or deep wells that are not linked in a system -- recently made a similar decision.

For the relatively small cost of such engineering studies, local communities that are not already receiving lake water would be remiss if they did not examine that option.

Problems such as the ones encountered in Hawthorn Woods help illustrate the difficulties in maintaining wells over time. In addition, continued heavy development throughout the region will put additional pressure on aquifers.

Hawthorn Woods Mayor Keith Hunt got it exactly right when he said recently that local officials should be looking 20 to 50 years, or even further, into the future in charting water needs.

Not that acquiring Lake Michigan water is as simple as making a choice and signing a dotted line. The studies Hawthorn Woods and Long grove have commissioned will yield details important to their communities. But the studies inevitably will show what other Lake County communities have learned -- that any attempt to tap into lake water will be a big and expensive project.

A consortium of several other local governments -- Antioch, Lindenhurst, Lake Villa, Old Mill Creek, Fox Lake and Wauconda -- already has the results of its study, which concluded that obtaining Lake Michigan water would require building 45 miles of pipes at a cost of about $178 million.

Even if these municipalities can chart a way to manage the expense, they still have no guarantee of getting the water. Because maintaining an adequate water level in Lake Michigan is so vital to so much of the Midwest, lake water is tightly regulated. No other municipality will join those already receiving lake water unless the Illinois Department of Natural Resources approves it.

If these sound like tall hurdles to clear, they are. But all signs suggest that prudent municipalities should be exploring every water option now. That starts with precisely the kind of steps that these Lake County towns are taking.