Dally, who works part-time at the public library, says her well is currently 15 feet deep, a fraction of some of her neighbours’ which have a depth of 500 feet.
Well there’s the problem….
“We have no idea how deep they will have to drill [to grab water],” she said, adding she’s been quoted up to $35,000 for a new well.
That line is probably more important. Also there’s no guarantee they hit water on the first attempt which would cost even more, people should understand that 35k isn’t even that much depending where you’re trying to drill for water.
Additionally like it mentioned in the article and the last few years by people monitoring ground water it looks like a lot of place are going dry regardless of high deep you drill.
Agreed. There’s a huge difference between a shallow well and a drilled well though; I know one person who had to switch around 15 years ago, for similar reasons, and they had to go down 740 feet to hit water — which turned out to be high in Boron so it wasn’t potable without filtering.
Anything in the tens of feet deep is just capturing ground runoff or is sitting on top of an artesian well. In a drought, that water either doesn’t exist in the first place, or is going to drop significantly lower with less pressure. Depending solely on surface water means your well WILL go dry somewhat regularly.
This person hasn’t lived there very long, and obviously didn’t know this about shallow wells.
Now as you point out, digging a deep well is no guarantee; there’s a high likelihood you’re tapping into the same aquifer as your neighbours, and so all it takes is one person to pump it down, and everyone loses their water for weeks until it fills back up.
Deep wells have the benefit that it takes a multi year drought to impact them significantly—that, or an increase in draw from the community. As long as everyone is being responsible and new wells are limited, a couple of years of drought will only have a minimal effect as the water table generally accumulates water from the surrounding rock, not just water that drained from the surface that year.
Don’t worry Nestle has you covered.
