🧠 Hydrogeological Vulnerabilities & Regulatory Risks

Goal: Expose the compounded hydrological impacts of green space loss and stormwater basin discharge on lake and watershed stability, while identifying regulatory blind spots.

🌲 Green Space Loss:

• Reduced infiltration capacity increases surface runoff velocity and volume

• Loss of vegetative buffers accelerates erosion and nutrient loading into lakes

• Diminished evapotranspiration alters shallow groundwater recharge patterns

🌧️ Stormwater Basin Impacts:

• Engineered basins may concentrate and accelerate discharge into lakes, bypassing natural filtration

• Elevated surface water levels can compress groundwater tables, increasing subsurface pressure

• Basin overflow during peak rainfall events can trigger flash loading into lake systems

• Discharge from basins may introduce harmful elements—temperature shifts, sediment, and nutrients—that disrupt lake ecology, trigger thermal shock, and increase the risk of algal blooms

• Basin-to-lake discharge may impair downstream capacity to safely release water, especially if harmful elements like algal blooms or contaminants are present, complicating lake-level management and ecological recovery

• Stormwater basins may contribute to groundwater rise through recharge, especially in areas with permeable soils or fractured geology—potentially elevating water tables, saturating root zones, compromising buried infrastructure such as sewer mains, and increasing seepage into low-lying residential areas and lake margins

⚖️ Regulatory Risks:

• Gaps in ordinance enforcement allow development in hydrologically sensitive zones

• Lack of integrated groundwater–surface water oversight leads to fragmented mitigation

• Absence of basin-to-lake discharge thresholds in permitting processes threatens the viability of our long-term pumping strategy to maintain legal lake levels and prevent residential flooding