Community Is Drained by Well Wars

The slightly crooked words scrawled in black paint read, “Pray for farmer who drains my well.” Sticking out of a front yard a couple miles away another sign says: “Good Christians know the difference between legal and ethical.”

In Saginaw County, the dispute over groundwater has pitted farmer against neighbor as residents charge that farms make their wells go dry each summer. Among the farms is 1,700 acres owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, irrigated with water from three high-capacity wells that have angered neighbors.

Local Mormon church leader David Rogers of Midland says the residents’ signs are hurtful. “It’s in total conflict with our value system to have neighbors who are negative or feel we have impacted” their lives, he said. “Our interest is to help people.”

Farmers say residents who complain have old, shallow wells that they’ve offered to help replace. The homeowners accuse farmers of being wasteful and say their wells would work fine if the high-capacity wells weren’t drawing down the water table.

The disputes are one reason a new law was passed by the state Legislature this year. State officials can now investigate potential groundwater conflicts by examining wells and water withdrawals, then try to get both sides to resolve their differences.

Lakefield Township resident Carolyn Allen, 45, says about 400 people in western Saginaw County have had water problems in recent years. The bulk of them began in 1999, when irrigation levels increased, she says.

Many people have replaced their wells, but about 30 households still have problems, says Allen, who has the “Good Christians” sign in her yard across from the Mormon farm. She has never lost water, but says other township residents usually see their supplies trickle to nearly nothing in late June or early July before flowing again in late August when irrigation tapers off.

Like other nearby residents, William Hollingsworth copes with the water loss by using paper cups and plates so he won’t have to wash dishes. He also buys bottled water for drinking, skips daily showers and has installed a 1,000-gallon tank refilled by a weekly water service.

The farms don’t need to use all the water they do, residents say. Allen says she’s videotaped a potato farm run by L. Walther & Sons irrigating in the rain. Others say the water sometimes runs off the fields because they’ve been so heavily irrigated. The high-capacity wells that the farms use can pump at least 100,000 gallons a day.

The Mormon farm -- an outpost of the church in an area that does not have a large Mormon community -- has more than 1,000 acres of potatoes, corn and sugar beets, along with eight high-capacity wells.

Michael Brown, Walther’s attorney, says the farmers aren’t wasting water -- just giving the crops what they need to grow.

“They think just because it starts raining that it must be enough.... Any farmer will tell you that’s not always the case,” Brown said.

He adds that residents just don’t want to acknowledge that their wells need to be replaced.

Residents who live within a mile of the farms’ irrigation wells have been offered financial help to replace their wells. Brown says a few people have taken Walther up on the offer. Rogers says the church has helped 17 people replace their wells.

Some residents have been reluctant to take the offers because they’re worried that if they voluntarily accept a new well and it were to fail, they would have no legal recourse. They also say that when the irrigation stops, their water comes back, so new wells aren’t really necessary. Residents have considered banding together for a lawsuit.

Republican Rep. John Moolenaar of Midland, who introduced the groundwater conflict legislation, says he hopes the law will help “resolve these differences with a handshake at the end of the driveway.” The residents and farm owners hope he’s right.

“We’re in the business of farming and that business is tough enough,” Brown said. “We can’t keep going through these summers ... with continuing to have to worry about lawsuits and other investigations and every other distraction that we’ve had to put up with over the last few years.”