Water Districts Proposed for Michigan
Published: Friday, December 26, 2025
Concerns over water availability dominated the discussions held at the annual meeting of the Michiana Irrigation Assn., held earlier this month in Elkhart.
Farmers want to make sure they have enough water to irrigate their crops. However, in both Indiana and Michigan, irrigators face possible restrictions if it's shown that their water use is having an impact on neighboring wells. In Michigan, farmers could be denied an irrigation permit if the state's Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool (WWAT) shows that a new well would result in a depletion of the groundwater in that area.
That doesn't sit well with some farmers, who say they can't trust WWAT because it doesn't consider site-specific data. A group of farmers known as the Midwest Water Stewards is proposing regional water districts that would bridge the gap between the state's WWAT, which is a predictive model, and irrigators, who want a better system than the one offered by the state's Department of Environment, Great Lakes & Energy (EGLE).
Todd Feenstra, owner of Tritium Inc., a hydrogeologic consulting firm, and the director of Midwest Water Stewards, unveiled the water districts concept at the irrigation association's annual meeting on Dec. 12.
Feenstra said the water districts would be a voluntary, non-governmental system that allows irrigators to have their data reviewed by local experts—before EGLE has a chance to render a decision.
Each water district would be governed by a board of directors, all of whom would live in the same district.
"A lot of this comes down to trust," Feenstra said. "We're not looking to change the current system. We're not looking to get rid of the WWAT, not looking to get rid of the screening tools. (We're) simply focusing on and helping address site-specific reviews and water user committees."
Feenstra's proposal would divide the state into six districts. The Southwest Michigan district includes Berrien, Cass, St. Joseph, Branch, Hillsdale, Van Buren, Kalamazoo, Calhoun and Jackson counties.
To be a member of the water district, irrigators would have to own or operate a large capacity withdrawal in that district and be monitoring their wells. Each district would have its own board of directors.
Feenstra said this system is better for several reasons. First, each district collects data and builds models for their area using professional hydrogeologists. Second, there is local representation on each water district board. Third, there is an appeals process. Finally, Feenstra said the decisions are fair.
"In no way is this stripping away authority—in no way is this stripping away decision-making ability," Feenstra said. "What this is doing is addressing the big need we have for good data, good models. It's building in some accountability, some appeals, it's creating a check and balance program for all of this."
He added that irrigators are more likely to trust the outcome if they trust the process, especially if their application is rejected.
"This is a way to get to a defendable position that people on both sides of the table can trust," he said.
Noting 85% of the large quantity water withdrawals in Michigan are from agricultural users, Feenstra said farmers are the key to this new concept.
Feenstra said the water district concept has garnered a "tremendous" amount of support from commodity groups, the irrigation industry and farmers. He said the next step is building out the grassroots movement.
Kelly Turner, executive director of the Michigan Potato Industry Commission, talked about the "rub" that makes water districts necessary. The WWAT indicates that certain areas are running out of groundwater. However, she said growers who have their own monitoring wells and stream gauges have data that contradicts EGLE's modeling tool.
"One of the big things that isn't being addressed is the lack of trust in the system," she said.
If the irrigation industry continues to rely on EGLE's modeling system, Turner said, then growers will have to start a different type of water district where its members decide collectively how to let other users join. This is the system used by water districts in the Western U.S.
"We're restricting economic growth right now because there's a rub," she said. "In order to protect that resource, we need to make sure we're not harming it. The tool says we may be harming it, and we don't have another tool to dig deeper and that people have trust in."
She said farmers who face water restrictions would have lower crop yields and less income.
She added that this also affects golf courses.
Both Feenstra and Turner said they aren't recommending that EGLE scrap the WWAT. Rather, they urge regulators to use it for its intended purpose.
"It was designed to be an online model to pinpoint hot spots across the state," Feenstra said. "But even the guys who put it together in the very beginning said it was never designed to be used in site specific reviews because it is so coarse."
Turner added that the WWAT, developed nearly 20 years ago, is a predictive tool only.
Laura Campbell, senior conservation and regulatory relations specialist with Michigan Farm Bureau, echoed the same sentiment.
"We do have a process, but it's klunky," she said.
On one hand, irrigators are told one thing by their consultant, but the state says another.
"There's really not a mechanism to figure out how do we resolve these two positions," she said.
According to farmers, the solution is using local data.
Over the past 10 years, Tritium has been partnering with farmers to monitor irrigation wells in both Indiana and Michigan. Maria Swearingen, a hydrogeologist with Tritium Inc., said Midwest Water Stewards has 231 active monitoring wells, stretching from Indianapolis to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The results show that groundwater levels are not going down.
"We're not seeing many changes," she said. "It's (been) relatively steady over the last 10 years. So, we're not seeing the depletion that they are saying we're having, which is interesting."
One explanation could be that the state's water modeling tool doesn't account for interflow.
According to Quinten Hunsberger, a hydrogeologist with Tritium, interflow is water that soaks into the top 4 feet of soil and moves laterally toward the nearest stream. The WWAT factors in surface water and groundwater flows but not interflow.
Hunsberger pointed out that water can be going several directions at one time. After a rain, water moves across the surface, seeps deep into the ground or, like interflow, moves laterally in the top 4 feet of soil. Interflow happens most after on sloping topography.
Overland flow reaches the stream within minutes to hours, while groundwater flow will take longer, anywhere from weeks to months. Interflow is somewhere in between, reaching the stream within days to weeks.
Hunsberger said Tritium also monitors water temperature. With three years of data, he has observed warmer temperatures at most sites.
"This makes us think that this stream and a lot of the other streams that we were monitoring have a pretty big interflow component to them," he said.
Most importantly, he said pumping from a well will not impact interflow, which is near the surface.
"Even if a well is hydraulically connected to a stream, if we have a big interflow component to that stream, pumping that well won't have as much of an impact on the stream as you would assume if you're not taking this into account."
He said this explains why depletion estimates are wrong.
Hunsberger said the WWAT is overpredicting stream depletion.
Feenstra said the goal of water districts is to have more data-based decisions. He said this will inspire trust in the system.
"Our goal is to build trust in those models," he said. "We all want that. You may get an answer that is still no, but it's a lot easier to get an answer and accept that from a system that you trust."
He added, "That's a very different standard than (what) we're using right now."
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