Home Wells Dampen Drought

While his Escondido neighbors are fretting over 20% water cutbacks and penalties for overuse and wondering which parts of their landscaping to let turn brown, Don Marnella is smugly watering his pampered lawn and his stately, 40-year-old avocado trees to his heart’s content.

A few blocks away, Bruce Harwood is doing the same. And so are Robert Gonsett in Fallbrook, and Angela and Perry Herst, who are building a beautiful new home in Rancho Santa Fe and who want their lawn to look just as spectacular--complete with a decorative pond, water shortage notwithstanding.

No fear of water cops, these folks. They’ve simply plumbed Mother Earth.

They are among hundreds of San Diego County residents who, spurred into action because of the drought and resulting water-use cutbacks, are spending up to $15,000 to drill in their yards for the region’s most precious resource.

Water wells, once a quintessential symbol of life for the backcountry farmer and grower, are now springing up in places like Escondido and San Marcos, Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe, Poway and Valley Center. Even in Clairemont.

The county Department of Health Services, which is responsible for approving applications for water wells throughout the county, received requests for 1,410 new water wells during the 1990-91 fiscal year, which ended June 30. That is up from 954 the previous year and 382 the year before that.

“I’m sure all the publicity about the drought has had something to do about that,” said Horace Ketcham, who oversees the water well application process for the county.

The people who drill water wells say business has never been as good as this year, and the people who can afford to have them say they enjoy the peace of mind that they will have green lawns, drought or no drought.

“My lawn will be green, my trees will stay alive, and I’ve got peace of mind,” said Marnella, the third person on his block on Orange Avenue in Escondido to sink a well.

Well drillers say that business is twice what it was this time last year, and that the increase is largely attributable to homeowners who covet their own, independent sources of water, mostly to irrigate landscaping.

“As soon as the Metropolitan Water District (the water wholesaler for Southern California) talked about cutting water back by 50% earlier this year, my phone started ringing off the hook,” said Greg Kircher, co-owner of the Hugh M. Harris Drilling Co. in Escondido.

“By February, I had enough work lined up to last me through mid-June,” he said. “Normally, I’m only backlogged three weeks.”

Business dropped after the March rains, he and other well drillers said, but then picked up again as water agencies drummed in the message that, despite the “March miracle” rains, the drought continued and water use would have to be cut by at least 20%.

“Just after those rains, my calls were down to about four a week, which was what they were, say, a year earlier,” Kircher said. “But now, they’re back up to 10 a week again.”

Acme Drilling Co.’s Tim Hettich said that, in 1989, he offered drilling bids for 146 wells; in 1990, for 161 wells. So far this year, he’s bid on 212 well jobs.

“People want to make sure they’ve got plenty of water to keep their places green while everyone around them is letting their shrubbery turn brown,” he said. “We’re talking mostly about the well-to-do people in residential areas who can afford this.”

Most of the wells are for irrigation purposes, not as a potable water source to supply domestic faucets or swimming pools, he said. Before water can be used in the house, its purity must be tested by the county health department.

While historically most agricultural wells have been sunk on ranches and groves where water was needed for fruit trees and other crops, more and more irrigation wells are being drilled in the front yards and back yards of homes in more traditional, suburban settings, according to well-drilling companies in the area.

Unless a water well is prohibited in a specific neighborhood because of that subdivision’s own rules, homeowners are free to sink wells on their property if they meet county regulations.

Those guidelines essentially deal with the distance from the well to the house, sewer lines or property line, in effect limiting wells to properties that are an acre or larger.

A well--and the attendant pump and other water lines--might cost from $3,000 to $15,000 or more, depending on how deep it is sunk, how accessible the site is and what kind of rock the drillers have to penetrate to reach pay dirt. Then, there is the cost of the electricity to run the pump to bring the water to the surface and move it through sprinkler lines.

If and when drillers find water, it’s theirs for the taking. “I remember one man asking me, ‘When I get the water, who do I pay for it?’ And I told him, you don’t pay anybody. It’s yours,” said the county’s Ketcham. “He was very happy to hear that.”

Los Angeles and Orange counties are not seeing a similar wellspring of interest in drilling.

Much of Los Angeles is over subterranean water basins that are replenished in the winter by the Metropolitan Water District. Taking water from them requires a court order plus reimbursement for MWD, noted one regional water official.

The cumbersome legal maneuvers and high costs discourage most people from trying, the official said.

Larry Honeybourne, who oversees water well permits at the Orange County Health Care Agency, said his office has been asked for fewer than 2 dozen well permits so far this year.

Southern Orange County’s water quality is poor--even for agricultural purposes--and the bulk of Orange County’s residents are served by water basins in central and northern Orange County, which supply them with water more cheaply than MWD, Honeybourne said.

“Already, the water prices are relatively inexpensive, so it wouldn’t be financially beneficial to sink your own well,” he said. Besides, he said, water districts in Orange County, which rely on their own ground-water supplies, have looser conservation measures than San Diego’s.

Although water isn’t hard to find beneath San Diego County, there is no guarantee that the drillers will hit it

Some companies rely on hydro-geologists to help locate a site that will be likely to produce results; others use water witches armed with divining rods.

“I don’t under-exaggerate the possibility of a dry hole,” Kircher said. “There are no guarantees in this business. If it’s a dry hole, I offer a reduced bill. But, on the average, 80% of the wells we sink in North County are wet.”

The possibility of a dry hole “didn’t keep us awake at night,” said Gonsett of Fallbrook, who put in a well to keep his 3-acre lot--and his cherimoyas--watered. “It was just one of the many things in life that’s a gamble.”

“It was a gamble I was willing to take,” said Harwood, who lives on an acre lot in an upscale subdivision in southwestern Escondido and who spent about $20,000 for his well.

“I’ve lived here for five years, and I started thinking about sinking a well during all the initial talk of the drought, last year,” Harwood said. “There was no way I could cut back by even 20% without losing some of my landscaping, so I started considering my options.”

Harwood hired a company to drill down 500 feet. They hit some water at the 200-foot, but he wanted more water so they kept digging. At 500 feet, he gave the go-ahead to drill another 100--where a larger water source was found. He had been prepared to go to 700 feet if need be.

“Now I’ve got peace of mind that I won’t lose a lot of money (on landscaping expenditures). If I had known about the drought originally, we wouldn’t have landscaped the way we did to begin with.

“But now I can relax. I don’t have to worry about the 20% cutbacks or about water rate increases. And it will be that much easier for me to sell my house.”

The water-use cutback, rather than the drought, was the reason another resident along Orange Avenue sank a well.

The homeowner, who asked not to be identified for reasons unrelated to the well itself, complained that the 20% reduction ordered by her Rincon del Diablo Municipal Water District hit her especially hard because the base year was when her home was unoccupied, and water use was at a minimum anyway.

“We talked to the district about allowing us more water, but they would hardly budge,” she said. “There was no way we could live here and cut back 20%, so sinking the well was our only option.”

Less than 5% of the water tapped by public agencies in San Diego County comes from wells, according to the San Diego County Water Authority. In contrast, 70% of the water that flows through Orange County taps comes from its underground water basin, officials there said.

“Chances are good you’ll find water here,” said David Barker, an engineer with the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, “but it may depend on how far you’re willing to drill to get to it.”

Angela Herst said the well being sunk on her and her husband’s property in Rancho Santa Fe had to be abandoned--and a second hole started--because of the amount of rock encountered during the first drilling.

But the additional cost was worth it, she said.

The couple are building a Mediterranean-style home on a 4-acre lot with a 2 1/2-acre orange grove, and they have planned drought-resistant landscaping.

The plans also include a decorative pond that will serve as a water-storage basin, where well water will be kept until it is drawn for irrigation.

“We could get by on the city water,” she said. “But there’s a difference between ‘getting by’ and peace of mind. We are currently in a drought, and we’ll come out of it--and then we’ll face a drought again in so many years. So this well will allow us to maintain the integrity of our property and give us peace of mind.

“If you have a love of land and of plants and trees, it’s terribly disturbing to have to watch it die because there’s not enough water.”