Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink

I’ve never given much thought to water. I just turn on a faucet and the city delivers clean running water. Open the drain and it goes out to the city sewage system. Easy, right?

Apparently it’s not so simple when one has well water. Once we close on the property we will be responsible for the water quality, treatment and pumping. I’m a bit of a germaphobe, so it was my intention going into this to test the water a lot. I hadn’t entirely thought through what would happen if the test was positive for coliforms. Really, that couldn’t happen, could it?

Yes, it could happen. Yes, it did happen. And now we know what I would do: hyperventilate -- a little. I wasn’t exactly running around the room in a panic, but that’s what it felt like in my head.  My brain raced through a list of go-to responses and discarded them just as quickly:

·         Ack!

·         I should call my mother!

·         I should call my lawyer!

·         No, I need a plumber. What’s a plumber going to do?

·         I can’t breathe! The floor is shifting.

·         We can’t live without water. . . or bathe!!!

·         How could this happen? How do wells work? I don’t understand! Ack!

I’ve found that most people get angry or agitated when they’re afraid they can’t handle something. I’ll probably be flipping out on a weekly basis for the next few years.  Fortunately the best remedy for not being able to handle something is to educate oneself. I do love the internet. It has an answer for everything, not always the right answer, but at least I’m not alone.

So now I’m a super-genius on the subject of wells. I learned the difference between dug wells and drilled wells. Just based on the description, I knew our future home has a drilled well.  Feeling smarter already, I kept going. I got a list of possible problems, which could be anything from flooding (not likely) to cracks in the casing (very bad) to it was just sitting unused for too long. And it turns out there is remediation for minor problems and major problems alike. We hope to find out about this during the inspection, but in the meantime I’ve gotten enough information that I calmed down.

I’ve also got a new fascination with water and septic systems.  For beginners like me, I recommend the EPA’s manual on home septic systems (http://www.epa.gov/owm/septic/pubs/homeowner_guide_long.pdf) and -- for Coloradan’s -- the state of Colorado's guide to domestic well permits, water rights and water administration: http://water.state.co.us/DWRIPub/Documents/wellpermitguide.pdf. The latter is very helpful in understanding the web of water rights laws in Colorado, because the water under the property will not be ours.

Really. . . our land, our well, not our water. It’s not just one of those “who can capture the wind” arguments. It’s a matter of practicality that we’re all sipping out of the same glass so to speak. We want it to be fair, but when livestock are dying in a drought what’s reasonable can trump what’s fair. I don’t envy the people who have the job of sorting it all out, but they have a great website.