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CATHY WURZER: It's 5:41 on an early Wednesday morning. I'm Cathy Wurzer, thank you for waking up with us. It's Morning Edition on Minnesota Public Radio News. Records from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources show that scores of water permit holders in Minnesota are illegally using billions of gallons more water than they're supposed to at a time when drought threatens state water supplies.

The records show that over the last six years, hundreds of individuals, businesses, and even state agencies have pumped more than their permit allows, but they face few consequences for these misdemeanor violations. Even in the midst of a two-year long drought, DNR officials admit they don't spend much time enforcing permit limits. We have this story from Mark Steil.

MARK STEIL: The violations come from nearly every category of water user, cities, crop irrigators, power companies, private businesses, golf courses, schools, government agencies, even a church, all have a state permit, which lets them take a set amount of water each year from underground , wells rivers, lakes, and wetlands. But many aren't obeying the terms of their permit. Dale Homuth is the DNR's head of water permit regulation.

DALE HOMUTH: There's no doubt that a lot of them are appropriating more water than they're currently authorized.

MARK STEIL: The DNR is supposed to enforce the permits. But Helmuth says stopping the excessive pumping is not a high priority. He says the DNR's main objectives include processing new water permits.

DALE HOMUTH: The number of new permit applications we're dealing with are at record levels the last couple of years. Every one of those is complicated controversial, takes a lot of staff time, and we have the same staffing levels we've had for 20 years dealing on these water appropriation permits

MARK STEIL: Homuth says another top priority is finding and dealing with illegal non-permitted wells. But state house member Jean Wagenius who chairs the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Finance Committee disagrees with that policy. Wagenius says drought is stretching the state's water resources. Speaking in her noisy State Capitol office, she says the DNR should give overpumping equal priority to processing new permits and finding illegal pumping.

JEAN WAGENIUS: DNR needs to do all three.

MARK STEIL: But so far, that hasn't happened. The DNR's water permit data shows the vast majority of the state's more than 7,000 permit holders stay well under their maximum allotment. But others seem to ignore it.

[BACKGROUND NOISE]

The Gerdau Ameristeel plant here in Duluth, the company has taken as much as five times its permit limit in recent years from Lake Superior. In Central Minnesota one plant business, Green Lake Nursery, overpumped from the Redwood River practically every year for two decades. One year, it used more than 50 times its limit. The Twin Cities suburb of Ramsey consistently exceeds one of its permits, some years using as much as five times the amount allowed.

MPR contacted several permit violators. None of them remembered any letter, phone call, email, or personal visit from the DNR, alerting them that they were taking more water than their permit allowed. None would agree to be recorded for broadcast. But these permit over pumpers rarely face any penalties. Even though the DNR is authorized to step in, the agency's Dale Homuth says that's because he doesn't have enough staff to identify violators.

DALE HOMUTH: We're struggling with a 20- to 30-year-old database system. We still get paper that we have to mail out and get back from over 7,000 appropriators and then manually enter all this data into this database.

MARK STEIL: But MPR was able to identify serial violators with just a couple hours of work and a spreadsheet program. Minnesota law says exceeding the permitted water limit is a misdemeanor. But the DNR's Homuth says, no one's ever been charged.

DALE HOMUTH: Not to my knowledge.

MARK STEIL: He says, that's because it costs too much to prosecute. Pat Sweeney is the research and communications director for the Freshwater Society, a Twin Cities-based group that works to protect water resources. Sweeney says the DNR should at least contact anyone who exceeds their pumping limit to call it to their attention.

PAT SWEENEY: If the DNR invested more time and energy and effort, I think they could clear up some of these problems.

MARK STEIL: Overpumping can cause real problems. In at least one case in recent years, overpumping by a neighbor contributed to a rural well going dry. Last year with the drought impact growing, well owners filed nearly a dozen more so-called well interference complaints. The DNR has not yet determined if excessive pumping played a role in any of those well disruptions. But a dry well is a big problem.

[BACKGROUND NOISE]

Southwest Minnesota resident Wade Anderson, who lives near Worthington, slides the concrete cover off his backyard well, his only source of water. He's one of many rural residents in the state who've seen the drought shrink the size of the underground aquifer they depend on. Anderson has run out of water at times.

WADE ANDERSON: With a family of five, it's tough to have to worry about getting water. There's just not a lot of good options out there.

MARK STEIL: There's no indication anything beyond the drought has hurt Anderson's water supply. But state house member Jean Wagenius says, the drought is a good reason why the DNR should more actively enforce water permit limits.

JEAN WAGENIUS: You want to make sure that someone doesn't use more than their fair share, because if they use more than their fair share, then the neighbor may have to dig a new well, and new wells and deeper wells are very expensive.

MARK STEIL: Overpumping could also accelerate water depletion in underground supplies of water, called aquifers. A recent US geological survey study said falling aquifer supplies likely caused declining water levels in White Bear Lake. Metropolitan Council water supply planning manager Ali Elhassan says, heavy demand has dramatically dropped water levels in that major aquifer under the Twin Cities by about 40 feet in the last 35 years in some locations.

ALI ELHASSAN: We are starting seeing trends that are not sustainable. And if we continue business as usual, pumping groundwater to meet our growth in the future, we start seeing even further adverse impact into our aquifers.

MARK STEIL: But if the DNR looks the other way on overpumping, the agency is focused on at least one part of the water permit program-- collecting the fee water permit holders owe the state. With few exceptions, they pay for the water they pump. The agency collects about $4 million a year from those fees. And when permit holders exceed their limit, the DNR gets more money. That's because the overpumping pays for those extra gallons. The DNR's Dale Homuth says, collecting the money is a priority.

DALE HOMUTH: As long as they, pay we're happy.

MARK STEIL: Among the over pumpers MPR contacted, a clear pattern emerged. While it's not a scientific sample, most permit violations appear to be based on a misunderstanding of permit requirements.

[BACKGROUND NOISE]

The Gerdau Ameristeel plant in Duluth fits that pattern. The company regularly reports withdrawing more water from Lake Superior than its permit allows. Gerdau officials would not do a recorded interview. But in an email, they said the company returns nearly all the water it takes from superior back to the lake. So to calculate permit usage, they subtract the gallons of returned water from what they pump. The DNR's Dale Homuth says, that's not the right way to do it.

DALE HOMUTH: They only think they need a permit for how much they actually consume, not how much they're pumping out of the lake, which is wrong.

MARK STEIL: DNR officials predict that better enforcement of water permit pumping levels will come with a new permit monitoring system slated to be operational later this year. When the new system is up and running and tracking over pumpers, it should flag the DNR itself. The agency's own data shows the DNR holds 65 water permits and has over pumped half a dozen of them. Some in multiple years. Mark Steil, Minnesota Public Radio News, Worthington.