"No one needs a hydrogeologist!"
When development threatens its drinking water supply, a community must pull together to find a new source before funding turns into a pumpkin.
Here’s a year-end update on the drinking water project that consumes most of my time. You can find all my drinking water posts here.
“You might want to move your wells”
Said our State engineer after looking at our wells at the bottom of a field, a sign at the top of the field advertising 48 lots for sale, each of which would have a septic system, and back to me, the newbie. Back in 2013, fresh on the island I’d been waterboarded - drafted onto the board of our community water system. As with the press gangs of old in my hometown of Portsmouth, England, there had been alcohol involved, but no King’s shilling. Instead, I’d drawn the short straw to represent the water system with the State Office of Drinking Water engineer at the scheduled Sanitary Survey.
“No one needs a hydrogeologist!”
Replied my new hydrogeologist friend when I told him I needed one. We met at a garden party, well, a yard party, somewhere deep in the woods on the island, which we were both attending as friends of the band.
“Well, I do, I need a wellhead protection area delineation done!”
Our state engineer had advised us to do hire a hydrogeologist to do just that. I told him the whole story.
“Call me in the office Monday. I’ll give you one of my guys.”
We got the study done, confirmed the risk to our wells, the for-sale sign came down, went back up, and came down again, and we forgot all about it.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s a LAMIRD!
A “Limited Area of More Intense Rural Development” is a land use planning term for an area of unplanned sprawl built in wild west days of the 1970s in a time before Washington State’s Growth Management Act (GMA) and that will never be brought into full compliance with it.
Our community is in one. In an area of just over a quarter of a square mile, we have around 400 residences in a dozen subdivisions, three homeowners’ associations, a historic beachfront community—historic, because it doesn’t comply with the Shoreline Management Act either—and four community water systems, all with old infrastructure and even older board members.
In a fever dream, I wondered what it would be like to bring those four water systems together with new wells and reservoirs up the hill out of harm’s way. I even reached out to the State engineer and planner to find out about consolidation grants and presented the information to our board. And some fell on stony ground.
Nevertheless, I began to spend more and more time on water system issues, building myself a whole third act in life as a serial non-profit volunteer and committee fodder, and gathering a network of contacts at county, state, and federal agencies.
Reader, I don’t do drama
And, towards the end of 2021, we had some on the water system board. As it resolved at the beginning of 2022, I reevaluated my commitments to boards and committees and decide to quit them, all of them, and ride off into the sunset. I immediately began to miss the people and started an email newsletter to keep in touch—the one you’re reading right now—which was just as well, because life had other plans.
No sooner had I quit the board than the landowner announced that development of the field above our wells was back on the table. The number of lots, though fewer, would still be enough to affect our drinking water. I reached out to my contacts at the state Office Drinking Water to see if their paused consolidation study grant might be reactivated, and learned that it was. I advised our and our nearest neighbor water systems that if they took advantage of it, they could get a plan to consolidate and to move the wells done for free. They went ahead and applied for the grant and hired an engineer to do the study, and I headed back towards that sunset.
“Are you well, John?”
Asked my eighty-year-old friend a few months later as he was kicking my seventy-two-year-old ass on the Sunday bike ride.
“As far as I know,” I replied, between gulps of air. “Why do you ask?”
“I saw in the paper that you got a Lifetime Achievement Award. That usually means you’re about to die!”
“Wiseass.”
In March of 2023, I learned that I’d been nominated by County staff for a Lifetime Achievement Award from the State Office of Drinking Water, a fitting coda to my ten-year volunteer career.
Not so fast. News of my retirement, as of my impending death, had been exaggerated.
Between hearing the news and receiving the award, one of our water system's representatives on the consolidation team ran into some health issues, and I was asked to step up. Over the next year, I participated in weekly meetings with our water system, our neighbors, the study engineer, and members of the Department of Commerce’s Small Communities Initiative team. I was back in the game.
One damn thing after another
The engineer finished the study in spring of 2024 and advised us to consolidate and move the wells, listing rough costs for four potential well sites. The problem was that the sites with lower costs weren’t available, and ones that were available were likely too expensive for the members of one or both of the water systems. We presented the findings to our members, who approved a resolution for us to keep on working at it.
Oh, sh..
Meanwhile, our neighboring water system on the other side had an E. coli bacterial contamination incident, had to issue a boil water advisory, was required to make system improvements, and was advised by our state engineer to consider a consolidation with us. There was no enthusiasm for that idea from either side, each convinced the other had the greater problem.
An outline of a way forward began to emerge. We could get a reduced rate construction loan from the state, a planning and engineering loan to prepare for it, and a free technical assistance (TA) engineer to prime the pump on all of that.
A pumpkin
In November 2024 there was a federal election. You may have heard about it. In March 2025, the draft federal budget proposed slashing the federal contribution to the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF), leaving funding for projects like ours in doubt. The program is fully funded through 2026, but after that it turns into a pumpkin. To have a chance, we’d need to get our construction loan application in by November of that year, which means completing a water system plan by March, which means drilling a test well in January, which means submitting a planning and engineering loan application by April 30th, 2025. About six weeks away at the time!
We were down to one available site, the more expensive one, which we called Site 4, but we didn’t know how much it was going to cost and so how much we should ask for, and we needed the free TA engineer, who wasn’t available yet, to figure that out for us.
“Why would you do that?”
In that vacuum, I reached out to some other water systems and try to ground-truth the rough costs in the consolidation report, as they had seemed low. Ground-truthing confirmed that they were. Concerned that our members might not approve the cost, we came up with a Plan B, to drill a deeper well next to an existing one to try to duck below the contamination. As my friends at the County put it, you’d be grandfathered in, so we’d let you, but why would you do that?
We got the application done and submitted in time and started preparing to ask our members to approve a budget to pay back the loan.
“If not site 4, then what?“
In an online information session for our members just a couple of weeks before that member meeting, the State’s DWSRF folks dropped a bombshell—we would not be getting the free TA engineer at all, a decision that threw into question the whole project.
In a flurry of phone calls and meetings, it became clear that the state wasn’t going to support our Plan B. They did not want to spend taxpayers’ money—paid, as the DWSRF director likes to point out, by single moms working two jobs in Topeka, Kansas—on a modified status quo. No, it had better be something that’s going to improve drinking water provision for as many people as possible for as long as possible. “If not Site 4, then what?” A good point. We resolved to do our best to make Site 4 work and were put back on the list. At our August member meeting, our members approved the budget with the loan repayment and a resolution to keep working on a consolidation.
The next day, I unplugged my computer and left on a three-week road trip.
Serendipity
Shortly after my return, our TA engineer was assigned, and we soon met with her. As it became clear that we still needed a way to get the water down from the proposed new well to the our existing facilities; that two of the possible routes were along other water systems’ pipeline routes; that more connections mean lower costs for each connection; and that more water systems retired means more “loan points” and a higher chance of loan forgiveness; the resistance to extending consolidation to more systems, at least from our side, began to soften.
At an apple-pressing on the island, I ran into a guy who is board chair of our community land trust. A week later, the land trust voted to move ahead with acquiring the land where we hope to drill our well, protecting both the forest and our aquifer recharge area.
On a visit to Site 4 with our engineer and our nearest neighbor water system, we met a landowner who may be able to offer us a pipeline easement. In a sit down meeting with the water system with the bacteria problem, that system's patriarch, who was dead set against consolidation, was now open to it and is looking at letting us share an easement. The fourth area system, with aging pipes and board members, is also open to considering it.
We signed and returned the Planning and Engineering loan agreement, put out an RFP for an engineer to drill and test the well and are meeting our first choice next week.
It’s all unicorns and rainbows at the moment, but we’re not out of the woods yet. There's another year to go before we apply for the construction loan and hire a contractor to complete the project. At that point perhaps I can sneak out of the back door.
Until then, I’m hoping we can at least get through the holiday season without any new crises.
I hope the same for you!
Thanks, as always, for reading. I’ll be back next week to bring you up to date on more drinking water issues. To make sure you don’t miss it, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Thanks so much for sharing your water sagas… it’s hard work, but building community through water seems an incredibly profound way to crown the human experience itself… your life support will continue “growing” that community!
I hope these people appreciate what you’re doing for the community. Without water, there’d be no community.