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Dry summer parches Shady Cove Mail Tribune / Drew Fleming Jack Winningham of Marie�s Water Delivery fills a 2,000-gallon tank with bulk water sold by the Medford Water Commission. Residents of Shady Cove whose wells run dry in the summer and others who need water can buy 200 gallons for 25 cents at dispensers on Antelope Road in White City and Columbus Avenue in Medford. Residents buy water, learn to conserve By Melissa Martin SHADY COVE � When Larry Miron turned on his kitchen faucet to get a drink of water last month, nothing came out. "Our well was producing 20 gallons a minute when we bought this house five years ago," the retiree said. "Now it�s dry." Miron has quenched his thirst these past two months by buying water delivered from Medford at a cost of $55 a week. He�s among a dozen folks with failing wells after a dry summer in Shady Cove, one of the few Oregon cities without a public water system. "We�ve had a busy summer," said Jack Winningham, who with brother Joe owns Marie�s Water Delivery. The two make frequent trips to Shady Cove. "Most of our customers have drilled two or three wells at a cost of about $10,000 each, and there�s no guarantee that they�re going to hit water," Winningham said. "Wells can go bad at any time and without any warning. And when you run out of water, you get a little cranky." A few motel guests have experienced a morning without water this summer at Edgewater Inn, Shady Cove�s new AAA motel. The motel�s 10,000-gallon holding tank fed by a well shared with Jackson County couldn�t handle the summer crowds, said owner Greg Joelson. "But when you have 300 showers in three hours, plus irrigation, we were barely short a few times � and you can�t be barely short of water," said Joelson, who is adding more water storage this winter. Shady Cove wells dry up or decline because ground water isn�t recharging as fast as it�s being pumped out, according to Eric Dittmer, director of environmental studies at Southern Oregon University. "We�ve got mostly hard rock, and ground water can only accumulate in the cracks," Dittmer said. "When it�s pumped out at a domestic rate of 150 gallons a day, it�s not hard to decrease your resource." Shady Cove is a trouble spot in Jackson County because wells are drilled at urban densities � 938 holes drilled in 1,622 acres, an average of one well for every 1.7 acres. Small lots tend to have more well woes than homes on five acres or more, said Ivan Gall, hydrogeologist with the Oregon Water Resources Department in Grants Pass. "We may get a call from a landowner saying, �My neighbor�s sprinklers are running all day long and my well went dry because of it,� " Gall said. "Sometimes when you get too many wells in one area pumping ground water, the water level drops. It can have a significant impact on people�s wells." This is the second summer Destiny and Don McLoughlin and their three children have experienced dry wells at their Sarma Drive home. The family is learning to conserve the water they get from a neighbor�s well. "We didn�t have a garden this year, and some of our trees died," said Destiny McLoughlin. "I always have a lot of strawberries out here, but this summer, they all turned brown." However, some Shady Cove residents enjoy an artesian-like supply. That�s the case for Kathleen Mason, who operates a pig farm in the city limits on property that was a pioneer homestead. "There are natural springs on this side of town," she explains. "You can walk up our field and see a patch of grass that�s almost always green." Shady Cove wells have a history of late summer decline, but replenish with winter rains, said Jim Collier, a retired teacher. But what has changed is well depth, he said. Some wells in Shady Cove go 500 feet � nearly two football field lengths � beneath the earth�s surface. Developer Ron Bennett deepened one of his wells to nearly 400 feet this summer after its production dropped from 45 to about 10 gallons per minute, he said. He asked the 200 people that depend on his private water system to conserve for the week that it took a Cave Junction well driller to bore the hole. He couldn�t hire any local drillers because they were booked through Christmas. Bennett receives requests from dry-well folks to hook up to his water companies, among 12 private water systems in Shady Cove. His hookup fee is $1,500, with a basic monthly water rate of $15.50, which can climb to $70 in the summer. Another decline this summer was a well that supplied the Fire District 4 station and MacGregor Park near Lost Creek Lake. "Now it�s pumping less than 5 gallons a minute, and it just supplies our station," said Fire Chief Bob Miller, noting that MacGregor Park rest rooms were closed because of lack of water. But there were also reports of successes. Medina Well Drilling hit 75 gallons a minute in Shady Cove, said co-owner Silvia Medina. City leaders say Shady Cove needs a permanent solution to its water worries. The city tried twice to pass bond measures to build a public water system. One of the groups that campaigned against last November�s $7.1 million bond, Affordable Water Alternatives Committee, has spent the past year in research. Members toured Gold Beach�s unique system that captures seeping river water into a pipe buried beneath the river bed, said Vic Cochero, committee chairman. "In Shady Cove, one-quarter of the people live in mobile home parks, and each park has a sufficient and great water supply," Cochero said. "The one I live in has the best water I�ve ever tasted. "It would only take three or four good wells tied together to serve all of Shady Cove�s water needs," he said. Joan Diestler, manager of Shady Cove Mobile Home Park, which enjoys a 135-gallon-a-minute well, agreed. "Shady Cove has plenty of water," she said. "We just have to be smart about it and decide what to do to get water to people who don�t have it." Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.