After multiple test wells in recent years, the Clancy Water and Sewer District is exploring new ways to develop a clean and reliable community water system.
Hydrologists from Great West Engineering, the project’s lead engineering contractor, plan to perform simultaneous water tests in multiple locations around Clancy, Great West’s Joel Pilcher said at the Apr. 23 District board meeting.
Great West hopes this approach reveals strong target locations for test wells. District board member Bob Johnson agreed that multiple sites would be more efficient than the serial testing conducted thus far and asked Great West to find several potential locations by the May meeting.
Looking at previously taken water samples, Great West engineers, according to Pilcher, have already identified two possible locations for test wells. One is a Clancy property owned by a Great West employee two miles from the district, on the edge of the Forest Park subdivision. This distance could pose pumping problems should it become a viable water source.
Yet Pilcher warned that the cost of creating a treatment system, plus upkeep, would likely make that plan unfeasible. Responding to a question, Johnson said the District had not performed a cost analysis comparing clean water piped in from a distance to the creation of a centralized treatment system. “The most important thing is to find water,” Johnson said.
The second Great West location is on a property owned by Steve Marks, near where a previous test well found contaminated water. Great West engineers hope for better quality water southeast of the previously dug test well. Water quality samples from near Alhambra and Lump Gulch were found to be unsuitable, said Pilcher.
At the well-attended monthly meeting a decade into the District’s quest for clean water, local landowner Keith Foley said he planned to drill wells on his Clancy Creek Road property in the coming months and proposed that the District test his planned wells for quality and pumping capacity. He warned that the water might contain unacceptable levels of radon.
County Commissioner Cory Kirsch said he would seek permission from the state to explore a well option at a state-owned property on the southern end of Old Alhambra Road.
Board president Lori Gilliland announced that the board recently received notice from the state’s Department of Natural Resources Conservation that other water projects had been elevated above Clancy on its priority list, making future state assistance harder to obtain.
Clancy resident Samantha Yeary expressed concern about the project potentially losing funding due to its lack of progress. Kirsch said that ARPA funds expire and must be spent by the end of the year, but otherwise, the project funding remained stable.
