By RICHARD BARD
In 1996, King County Water District 19 completed a well near the top of Morgan Hill, east of Vashon Highway on 216th Street. Testing showed it could produce a modest amount of water, around 40 gallons per minute (GPM), and found no adverse effects on nearby water bodies or other wells.
Unfortunately, this was about the time the state Department of Ecology (DOE) stopped issuing new water rights, and for that reason the district has been unable to use the well except under emergency permit during drought conditions.
Repeated well failures at our main field behind the Sheffield Building have taught us — painfully — that we cannot pump as much as the 250 GPM that we’re legally allowed to pump at that site.
DOE has advised that part of that right could be transferred to the Morgan Hill well, if a new engineering study concurred with the earlier findings of no impacts on the aquifer or neighbors, and if there is no strong objection from the public.
During a severe low-water period in 2005, water was pumped from Morgan Hill to the community under an emergency permit for two weeks. All went smoothly. Since the infrastructure is already mostly in place, there would be little disruption to the neighborhood to bring the well permanently online. The new engineering study is under way.
Adding this source would be a great help to the district in mitigating the lost capacity from the main well field. Added to other projects the district will be working on in the near future — the Beall well, modifications to the main storage tank and conservation — it’s hoped that we’ll be able to produce at least a modest surplus over what’s currently needed for peak day delivery.
Another direction we hope to focus on, now that a draft of the district’s new six-year water system plan is completed, is water quality. Most of us know that, as a sole-source aquifer, our water supply depends on the rain that falls on the Island to replenish it — hence the relatively low-density zoning that maintains the open land needed to absorb that rainfall. Quantity’s not the only issue, however; water that soaks into the ground can carry a lot of what’s been put on the surface with it. The recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer series on the Duwamish area’s serious contamination vividly showed what happens when no thought is given to the makeup of what gets spilled or dumped on the ground.
Of course, we have no history of heavy industrial pollution here, but our relatively small-scale activities can add up. Therefore, the district hopes to nudge people toward voluntary consideration of the products they use on their property. Are some detergents better than others for car-washing and other outside cleaning? Which lawn care and other landscaping products are non-toxic?
Issues like these are important not only to those who depend on District 19’s springs and deep wells, but even more to those people using private, shallower wells that are not regularly monitored for contaminants. Water can be a contentious issue here on Vashon, but hopefully the idea that water is important for health and merits common sense measures to keep it clean will not be too controversial.
Back to the Morgan Hill well. In hope of community support for the project, we at District 19 want to let Islanders know about our intentions to expand production there, and we invite your response. Questions, concerns or comments can be delivered directly to the district office or at our public board meetings, held on the second Tuesday of each month.
— Richard Bard is a commissioner for King County Water District 19.
