Well seems to be going dry....

I don't know the strange water laws out west. It sounds like you may get some help from Trout Unlimited to fix the problem.

Be very careful not to let the county know that you have a limited water supply. I have seen reports on here that the Child Services can take your kids away if you don't have a clean water supply or running water.

I don't view it that way, but to follow that thought, I would not owe you a brand new luxury car, I would owe you the $500 value the car actually is.

Lets say a well lasts 50 years, yours is 3/5 used up.

And it appears it was not a good proper well, you didnt know that, neither do they - you admit that yourself. So at the worst the blame is 50-50, neither of you knew.

So, following this line of thinking, you would be responsibe for 7/10ths of the new well, and they would be hit for at most 3/10ths.

So they don't owe it to you to make this right, as in make a new well for you. At worst you are looking for 3/10ths of the cost?

Paul

There is a huge confined hog barn that was built about 7 or 8 miles from where I live. That barn's water consumption caused all of the wells that were within local radius to go dry. Several wells were involved and yes they took the company to court and won some pretty big bucks. It can happen.

This I understand.

They lowered the aquifer, using more water than was there. The hog operation is changing the natural amount of water.

The original situation is different as I understand it. They were pumping a lot of water, and leaking it into the ground. By fixing their water setup, they are no longer leaking that water. The aquifer is now going back to its original, natural level.

That is a much weaker claim? IMHO. I understand looking into it, and making a phone call. But I wouldn't get my hopes up too high.....

Paul

Here in WA who has what water rights will make a big difference. It does sound like the Trout people are willing to do their share to fix the problem.

If you lived within an acre of the Kalamazoo River and had a 30 foot well, there would be a good possibility you would be drinking PCB's from all the old paper factories, or oil spilled by the Enbridge pipeline break........

I wouldn't even drink water from the lake next to me, and it's crystal clear.....

How much would you have to pay for a deeper well?

geo

Plain and simple - you need to get a deeper well - one that goes down deep enough to get good water deep in the ground and not surface water - its a wonder you haven't gotten sick from drinking comtaminated water up to now - my well is over 250 feet deep - down through bed rock with a steel casing keeping ground out of the well - that's the kind of well you want - good luck -

jwal10--Yes I pay for my water shares but that is only irrigation. Our well is only ours so there is no meter, no monthly bill etc. Like I said until all this happened, I wasn't certain that our water was being affected that much by the canal issues. But to clarify, Wenatchee river is never high in the winter (maybe I explained something weirdly) that's what we figured caused our low amounts of water recovery time in the winter. In the spring with run off and fall with all the rain would cause the river to come up and that's what we thought was the main cause of having such fast water recovery spring, summer & fall. It seems to be a combination of the two between being dependent on how high the river is and if the canal irrigation was on. We know now that if the well inspector had tested in "off irrigation" season then the well probably wouldn't have passed when it went in originally or prior to us buying the place.

Nimrod--I have heard of CPS doing that but typically that's when it's a long term issue usually when people try to continue to live in condemned homes. But even here in Wa. state they can't take your kids even if you're living in a tent as long as you're able to supply the basic needs like food, shelter providing the weather is good and clean water store bought or otherwise. :O)

Rambler--Exactly, and I am expecting that they will offer something, probably not the whole amount because it wasn't a new well to begin with. The concept of paying when you damage someone's property is to make them as whole as they were, not better. This I agree with, but if they offer to do the whole thing, I'm not saying no lol :O)

Geo--Estimates for a 60ft well to be drilled, and using our pump and tank that we already have is coming in about $7000. We looked into connecting to city water to see if it would be cheaper but it's not due to a 'charge in lieu of assessment fee' from this property being put into the Local Utility District the year before we bought it. What that fee is, I learned, that back in 96 property owners were given the option to connect to city water then and pay and extra fee every month on top of their water usage until that fee reached $18000 to pay for offering city water out here we're only a mile and half outside city limits. Then they would only being paying their water usage amount after that. Or owners could opt-out & stay with wells but if at anytime later on they wanted to connect to city water, then that fee would stand and have to be paid up to current as though they had been paying it all along. That said, to connect to city water would be $5700 to install a meter chamber etc. plus plumbing it to the house plus this fee, which for this property (since the previous owners opted out, and this was never mentioned when we bought the place) is $14998 to be in compliance. Yeah this was new info to us and it makes a well the only option we can ever afford here and even that is a stretch.

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You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him float on his back.

A deep well, if they go through rock, can run into real money. I'd be leery of spending money on a gamble of getting more water. (unless you have the extra cash just sittin around).

One option would be to build an above ground ferrocement tank (oversized to carry twice your yearly 'demand') and pump the water during the wet portion of the year, and top off the tanks, as an insurance policy. Water in the tank, is like having a 'bird in the hand'...

Imho, a 'stored water' source is golden... trusting public water supplies is only good as the electricity works... pumps, the same, unless one has a solar panel to power the pumps... River would work... just a matter of how to convince the water to get to the house (in a shtf scenario... could always haul buckets)...

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

texican--I know what you mean about 'trusting public water supplies'. I have always enjoyed the fact that when the county issues a warning (several times a year) that the water is contaminated and to come to the firestation to get your drinking water, that we could always just sit back knowing ours was fine because of the well. When we bought the place, we thought it was awesome that there where (what they thought) 3 natural springs on the property that supplied goat/horse water, flowerbed water and a supply for a little pond and creek.....turns out those were also just leaks off the old canal as they have all dried up. I'm really missing those lol but hopefully they'll come through soon with an offer otherwise we just don't have the budget to fix this until spring and the irrigation gets shut off for the season October 1st.

Thanks to all for your help and suggestions, I have learned a ton here and feel much more capable in my understanding of our water system :O)

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You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him float on his back.

Given a steady irrigation supply, one can fill cisterns during irrigation and purify it with bleach, unless laws prohibit that. I ran the water system in a small Western town that got ALL it's domestic water from the irrigation ditch, then pumped it from the pond the ditch fed, filtered and bleached it and supplied the whole town. You might check the bylaws in the irrigation district.

Just an item of interest. I bought this place about 15 years ago, and it had a pond that held about 650k gallons, by my reconning. About 3 years later, somebody bought acreage below me and "witched" and drilled a domestic well directly below my pond, which always leaked dry after the monsoons within about 3 months of being filled, so I'm sure I was contributing to that well through my leakage of half a million gallons per average year. They moved out and the place is for sale, and I have been reducing the height of the pond dam several feet per year, because I don't use the water for anything and don't really need the skeeters. Soon, the pond will be no longer a pond, and the well will not be getting the leakage any more.

Similar to your situation, in some ways. Whoever buys the property may think I owe them a well, because the previous owner drilled into my leakage instead of going to natural groundwater. He will have no hope of getting a well from me, because there is no way of proving where the water came from that supplied the well in the first place, plus what lawyer would take on a deal like that without charging big bucks up front? Far more than the value of just drilling a well properly.

I don't offer any of this to discourage you, and I hope the ditch owners will pony up and help out, because they can afford to and they should value good neighbors, but just to give you some perspective on where you might stand. I'm not the least concerned about drying up my pond, because it's MY pond, and nobody invited those folks to rely on it leaking a half million gallons a year, predictably.....Joe

Joebill--Fortunately, for the next people who buy the property next to yours, I imagine they will have an inspection/testing of the well that will show that it has dried up so they will know right up front leaving no curiosity as to where the water came from or went. I will check into the irrigation laws here regarding a filling a cistern, it would at least give us another option :O)

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You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him float on his back.