Jess Torgersen sits by a 1,000-gallon reservoir his parents got earlier this summer to compensate for a lack of well water on their home near Klamath Falls, Ore. The water table in the area has been going down since 2001 because of dry weather and increased pumping.

8/26/2005

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – Irrigators who pump water to augment Klamath Reclamation Project flows selectively shut down their wells in August to reduce impact on rural homes experiencing water shortages.

One of the problem areas is Hill Road, which hugs the foot of Stukel Mountain southeast of Klamath Falls. The water table has dropped about 3 1/2 feet a year for the past four years.

“It’s been kind of stair-stepping down,” said Ned Gates, a hydrogeologist for the Oregon Water Resources Department who monitors the Klamath Basin water table.

To try to stop the drop for this summer and get water back in some residential wells, irrigators near the affected houses on Hill Road have stopped pumping for the year. The wells were part of the mid-Basin pumping group, a cluster of wells throughout the middle of the federal project whose 31 owners divided $900,000 from the government to pump this year.

“We are not (pumping) in any places where there have been any impacts,” said Jim Carleton, one of the owners.

But the problem could come again next summer, as it has every year since 2001.

The year 2001 is an important one on the calendar for well water use in the Klamath Basin.

Not only does it mark the year that the federal government didn’t put water through project canals and many farmers dug down to use groundwater to grow crops, but it also marks the high water mark underground after wet years in the late 1990s.

Although the federal government filled the canals every summer since, it is also paying people to pump. As part of the “water bank” program, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation signs contracts with irrigators to idle land or to pump water into the canal. The goal is to boost flows down the Klamath River for threatened coho salmon.

“Remember, a lot of these wells didn’t exist until 2001,” Gates said. “That’s what all this is in response to.”

Since late July, Hill Road residential wells have gone dry.

“Sometimes you’ll be taking a shower and it will just stop,” said Jill Mathis, who lives with her parents on Hill Road near Dehlinger Lane.

The situation of her nearby neighbors, the Torgersens, has been worse.

On July 31, the couples’ well pretty much stopped.

“We (had) about a pencil-width of water coming out of our tap,” said Robin Torgersen.

Gates came to check on the well. He comes from Bend every other month in the summer to get readings from wells that he has been monitoring since 2001. He also checks when word comes of well problems, like the Torgersens.

Gates dropped 40 feet of cord down the well.

Buzzz.

“Ope ... There’s water,” he said.

The electric gizmo at the end of the cord hit the water, completing a circuit that rings the buzzer.

Many of the wells Gates checks have water in them, but the pumps aren’t placed deep enough to reach the water.

The waterless homeowners either have to have their pumps lowered or wait for the water table to come back up.

It could be a long wait.

For the water table to rebound, there needs to be a relaxing of the irrigation pumping and a shift in the winter weather. Although this spring was wet, the winter wasn’t snowy, and snowmelt, with its slow seep into the ground is one of the main ways aquifers are recharged.

As for the Torgersens, they may have water again this summer because irrigation pumps near them have been shut off and the water table is rebounding as a result. But, they are weighing what to do with their well for the long haul.

If the water table keeps going down they will have to have the pump placed deeper, which could be a tough task because it was as far as they could get it without having a driller widen the well more when they had it dropped down in 2001.

In the meantime, the Torgersens have a backup plan.

They spent $400 on a 1,000-gallon green plastic water reservoir and are using it and gravity to put water through their tap.