September 1, 1999
By Nancy Petersen
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
It should have been a tender farewell when the oldest child of Beth and David
Ward left for his freshman year at Pennsylvania State University. Instead, Scott Ward
couldn't wait to get out of the house.
As his father said, his son was going to a place with working indoor plumbing.
Two weeks ago, with little warning, the Wards' well ran dry. So, while they wait for a new well to be drilled, the East Bradford family has settled into a tedious routine of showering at the homes of friends or at the Y, cooking on the gas grill to avoid using pots and pans, and eating off paper plates.
"We are pioneering in West Chester," said David Ward, adding that the family's good humor and patience were wearing thin. "I hear people complaining about not being able to water their lawn. I think it would be nice to have water to drink."
The Wards' well is one of 60 in Chester County that dried up during June, July and August, said Ralph DeFazio, the county Health Department's environmental health supervisor. That's 22 more than a typical year. The real crunch for well owners could come this fall, a time when groundwater levels typically drop, he said. The wells most in danger are those that are 100 feet or less.
According to the 1990 census, about one out of three Chester County households - 49,316 - relied on private wells. DeFazio said about 1,350 permits for new residential wells are issued each year.
"It is people with the weaker wells, the ones that are older and not too deep, that are most susceptible," said well driller Richard Keyes. These people should be doing everything they can, such as washing their clothes at coin laundries, to avoid the expense of drilling a new well, he added.
A 200-foot well with a new pump can cost $3,500, said Keyes.
When a well runs dry in Chester County, the Health Department must issue a permit for a replacement. Normally around this time of the year, the number of permits issued for replacement wells is around 38, so the trend is definitely up, DeFazio said.
In Bucks and Delaware Counties, getting an exact number of dry wells is difficult because well permits are issued by municipalities.
But in Montgomery County, 137 emergency permits have been issued this year, said Rachel DeMarzio of the Montgomery County Health Department. Last year, the department issued 77 emergency permits, with 70 coming in the last six months. That's when last year's drought warning was issued, she said.
At a depth of 70 feet, the Wards' well is what the Chester County Health Department categorizes as shallow, compared with the optimal 200 feet, DeFazio said.
Typically, DeFazio said, there are a couple of warning signs that a well is about to quit. Water comes out brown as the pump starts bringing up sediment at the bottom of the well, and the water will pulse, rather than flow, out of the spigot as more air is pumped into it.
Ward said the demise of his well was quick. Over the second weekend in August, there was reduced pressure, and by that Monday morning, nothing but air came out of the faucets, he said. Without an automatic shut-off valve, a device that turns off the pump after a certain period of time, the pump burned out, too.
Keyes said that with reduced groundwater levels caused by the drought, all wells are being affected. He said people should not expect to tap into some vast underground river or lake. That's not the way the geology is in this region.
"If there was a big lake down there, we would all collapse into it," he said.
Instead, groundwater is captured in the breaks and fractures that weave through the bedrock. Drilling a successful well is a matter of intercepting the water in those cracks between the rocks, he said.
Jan Bowers, executive director of the Chester County Water Resources Authority, said the county averages about 47.5 inches of rain a year. Of that, 13.5 inches, or about 28 percent, infiltrates into the groundwater, recharging the supply. The rest is lost to plant uptake, evaporation and stormwater runoff, she said.
During a drought, there is nothing to recharge groundwater supplies, she said. The cracks in the bedrock closest to the surface start to empty out and dry up, resulting in less water flowing into a well.
"As the water level in the well continues to drop, once it gets below the pump, you are out of luck," said Bowers. "There is nothing to pump."
Patricia Knight knows what it's like when there's nothing left to pump. Over the ear-splitting racket of a well drill relentlessly hammering through the bedrock below her front yard, Knight told of how her family has lived with a weak well since buying a Westtown home 22 years ago.
"We would take a couple of showers, do a couple loads of wash and be out of water," she said. "Then, it would take an hour for it to come back. We thought this is how a well works."
The family adjusted. The three children grew up taking "on and off" showers, the family members gave up watering flowers and shrubs, and they keep drums of fresh water on hand in the garage, Knight said. The state's mandatory drought restrictions are nothing new for them, she said.
But this summer, as their well became even weaker, they decided to drill it deeper, hoping to hit a fissure that would yield plenty of water.
Last Friday, after two days of drilling, the well crew halted the drill bit at 440 feet, even though the yield was just a gallon a minute, far less than the ideal of five gallons a minute. But with a deeper well able to hold up to 500 gallons of water, Knight pronounced the effort a success.
"Now, we should be able to have a fairly normal life," she said.
Friday, May 19, 2000
Progress has provided for us a well designed drainage system
that is stealing our ground water.
With each new parking lot, building, driveway, and road, the builders of the
future carefully design
their scheme to capture, collect, and drain to the sea, all of the rain that
falls.
Ancient civilizations did all they could to capture and store as a sacred commodity this same rain.
If we as a civilization wish to continue into the future, a
reversal of this wasteful practice of
sculpting the earth to shed the rain water into the oceans must be implemented.
Here we must not rely on the complicated fix that technology
would suggest, but a simple
common sense approach . This approach would undo the mistakes of the
past and
imitate nature's original design, allowing the rain water to return to the
earth.
Wednesday, September 6, 2000.
Although the rains have graced us with regular showers this
summer, the French Creek's flow is shallow and slow.
Thirsty trees who desperately cried for water last summer, drink the soil dry,
leaving little runoff for the French Creek.
|
East Pikeland
Township |
Pughtown |
James E. Frizzell
Post Office Box 595
Kimberton, Pa 19442
jimmy@jim-frizzell.com
date posted: September 6, 2000
last revised:
August 22, 2007