EAST LYME — A well on one of the town’s most pristine drinking water sources has deteriorated to the point where it is providing just a fraction of the water it once produced, and will require a new drilled well.
It’s a $920,000 project that could be funded with federal aid from the American Rescue Plan Act, but a recent vote by the Board of Finance has delayed the allocation of that money as town officials debate when and how the money will be spent.
Well 5 – located off of Wagon Wheel Road, near Pattagansett Lake – was drilled in 1994 and once produced 780,000 gallons a day. Over time, as iron and manganese deposits accumulated around the wellhead, that production dropped to a peak of less than 200,000 gallons of water a day.
Ben North, the town’s municipal utilities engineer, explained that there had already been several attempts over the years to try to clear out the deposits from the wellhead — a common solution for this type of well — but that each effort came at cost of $30,000 and with diminishing returns.
“We did it in 2019 and didn’t really see any improvement at all, and we had done it in 2016 and seen very little improvement, and so on,” North said.
The constrained flow also puts more strain on the town’s other wells, which need to run more to make up for the lost production.
The limited flow also means that about $5 million worth of equipment isn’t working to its full capacity, and the well with the lowest levels of sodium in town and relatively low levels of...
Read Full Story: https://ctexaminer.com/2021/10/18/debate-over-federal-aid-threatens-to-delay-water-project-in-east-lyme/
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