Ancient Water Quenches Town’s Thirst

The first clue came when the lawn sprinklers lost their oomph. Then faucets around town slowed to a drip. When people climbed into showers, no water came out. And this on a weekend when 20,000 guests were on the way.

Fortunately, the crisis was fleeting. After a couple of days spent shutting down offending hoses, Oakley’s overtaxed Cottonwood Spring was spewing water once again. But that near-miss in the Kamas Valley two summers ago--days before the annual July 4 rodeo, the community’s biggest event--warned of dry times ahead.

For Oakley had grown. The sign at the edge of town, “Hurry Back to Oakley, population 525,” was outdated by hundreds of souls. Subdivisions had sprouted and filled with families demanding clean, fresh water--a valuable commodity, especially in this patch of the forever arid American West.

Though no one knew it then, an ideal solution was at hand--one that could quench Oakley’s thirst and keep it on tomorrow’s maps.

Silently, in the dark, it had waited for nearly 200 centuries, since ice shrouded the planet. To find it, they would have to go into the mouth of Seymour Canyon above town, then down, down, down into the earth. They would have to drill past silt and muck from Brigham Young’s time, down 1,840 feet through shale and sandstone that last saw light before the epochs of Caesar and Homer and Cheops, deep into limestone hidden since before humans walked the planet.

In a tiny pocket of underground called the Humbug Well, cool and still and pure and protected, sat Oakley’s aquatic salvation.

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On July 22, 1847, two days before Brigham Young and his Mormon pioneers arrived in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, his advance team set up camp near a freshwater creek, smack in the middle of what is now Salt Lake City. Several began plowing a swath of land to cultivate potatoes; others dug a ditch from the stream to moisten the soil.

It was the first irrigation by the settlers of what would become Utah.

Before long, a few moved 45 miles east to the edge of the Uinta Mountains, where the Weber River Basin awaited exploitation. By 1860, rights to nearly all the region’s mountain streams had been appropriated. In coming years, the search for water to wet crops and whistles would define the development of both the state and the American West.

At the foot of the Uintas, Oakley has held on for more than 100 years, circumscribed by its water supply since its first settlers, attracted by the Weber, built a scattering of homes across the valley.

The citizens have traditionally been ranchers and farmers, who rely on irrigation to exist. In recent years, Oakley’s population has doubled with the influx of “lifestyle immigrants”--urban, coastal Americans moving inland to states like Colorado and New Mexico and Montana and Utah. They seek the West’s frontier mystique and open spaces, but they expect goods, services and water within easy reach.

In Utah, the second-driest U.S. state (after Nevada), the largest body of water is salted and undrinkable. Half the available water is consumed by humans; the other half either sits unused in wetlands or evaporates. Shortages are a constant fear. Streams are always low and claims high, especially in rapidly growing Summit County, where most aquifers are connected and supply is limited.

As Town Grows, So Does Alarm

So when Oakley started running dry that July day, it was serious business. And Mayor Doug Evans knew it warranted a serious response.

His government had just installed a million-gallon storage tank, but the town was still growing: A 93-home subdivision was rising, a private school had opened and a senior citizens’ residence was being built. Oakley was, by Oakley’s standards, bustling.

In fall 1997 the city council had commissioned the drilling of a new well up in Pin~on Canyon. They struck water, but it tapered off after a day and didn’t recover. Drilling anew meant some financial risk for a town with a $220,000 budget; a major project would require floating a bond, and there were no guarantees they’d find any water. But after the July shortage, Oakley had little choice.

After examining U.S. Geological Survey maps from 1990, the town and its contractor, Weston Groundwater Engineering, settled on what was known as the Humbug Well. They knew a silver-ore mining project down the road in Park City had been abandoned in the 1920s when a tunnel filled with water. Bill Loughlin, the project’s hydrogeologist, surmised it came from an untapped aquifer.

“The miners were trying to get rid of it. We were looking for it,” the mayor says.

A test drill on city property deep in U.S. Forest Service territory in Seymour Canyon verified fluid 1,000 feet under. But they decided to gamble and go deeper, hoping to find water kept pure by a protective layer of clay.

Then, one afternoon in September 1998, just as they were about to give up, Loughlin called Evans. “We hit water, baby!” the hydrogeologist exulted. From deep within a layer of Mississippian limestone, a sort of geological cul-de-sac, water was gushing into the Utah sky at 175 gallons a minute-- water in such abundance that it could nourish Oakley’s crops and cows and citizens for at least two decades, probably far longer. Water that could ensure Oakley’s future.

But that wasn’t all. Another surprise awaited.

“We’ve had a lot of suggestions,” the mayor says. “Everything from ‘Glacial Frost’ to ‘Woolly Mammoth Water.’ ”

“ ‘Mastodon Springs’ even came up at one point,” says David J. Smith, Oakley’s attorney.

Loughlin, the hydrogeologist, squinches up his face. “That gives me visions of rotting carcasses,” he says.

They’re sitting in City Hall discussing how--and whether--to market their new water. Which they definitely could, because the water in Humbug Well holds an unexpected bonus: It’s 18,000 years old, give or take a few thousand years--no small matter in an age when 900 brands of bottled water do $4 billion in business in America alone. And, unlike most other water sources, Oakley’s is virtually free of contamination from humanity’s nuclear age.

They didn’t realize it was special at first. Sure, it was crisp and clean, no caffeine. But Ice Age water?

They sent it in for testing, which showed only minute traces of dissolved minerals--calcium, magnesium, bicarbonate and sodium. That meant it was quite pure. They tested for arsenic, lead and heavy metals; none turned up. This was special water indeed.

Then the fluoride level tested at 1.7 parts per million--uncommon in Utah, meaning it probably wasn’t connected to known Weber Basin water sources. Finally, the kicker: The water showed only minute traces of tritium, a byproduct of nuclear energy, meaning it had been protected since before 1953.

So they shipped it to GeoChron, a Cambridge, Mass., company that does carbon-14 testing, the method used to date Egyptian mummies and the Shroud of Turin. The results stunned everyone.

“We’re all scientists; we’ve been doing this for a lot of years,” Loughlin says. “But we were like a bunch of little kids with this. It was like finding a fossil in your backyard.”

Or a gold mine. No one knows how much is down there, but they know it’s a lot.

Though there are never guarantees with ground water, especially at such depths, the most advanced geological technology available, peer reviewed and analyzed by the U.S. Geological Survey, shows the aquifer that contains the water is huge. Testing bears that out: Geologists pumped the aquifer vigorously for five days and measured how water levels changed. The depleted aquifer returned to its original level in half an hour--a firm indicator that it will supply Oakley with water for years, even decades.

“It’d be great if we had X-rays. But we don’t just lightly say we’re confident,” Evans says. “We’ve spent a lot of money and done a lot of science.”

Environmental Impact Monitored

The town foresees no adverse environmental impact because of the drilling. Still, hydrogeologist Todd Jarvis has devised a plan to monitor the water’s age over time; increasingly younger water would indicate it was coming from an outside source rather than just the well. Levels in the Weber will also be measured to ensure the Humbug Well pumping has no effect.

The water, meanwhile, will remain sealed off from the surface world. Cement grout fills the gap between the 15-inch drill hole and the 10-inch seal-pipe casing, and the multiple layers of stone and clay also will protect the well from contamination.

The water’s ancient origins have made talk of bottling and marketing inevitable--especially if the town wins the legal right to declare Humbug Well a new water source. Hucksters have begun to call, some kooks, some legit.

“A good copywriter and a great artist and a bottler with a lot of resources might be able to make a go of this,” says Arthur von Wiesenberger, a consultant to the bottled-water industry. “But it’s one thing to have good-tasting tap water; it’s another to have the savvy and marketing to get into the business.”

Evans is enthusiastic but cautious, and he should know: He’s in the business. When he’s not mayoring, he manages a municipal water system several towns over. “We’re a small community, so we don’t do things fast,” he says. “We know we can have the golden touch if we can just do it right.”

Legal obstacles restrict the city’s free-enterprise activities, and enlisting private help cedes local control. It’s fine to promote the town and bring money in, but the municipal supply has to come first. And besides, does Oakley really want to be Watertown, USA?

Well, yes and no. The mantra of “controlled growth” echoes across the West as never before. Towns are filled with folks who like things the way they are, thank you, and although they might endorse something modest, anything that clogs streets and taxes infrastructure might not be welcome. Neighboring Park City has grown into a full-blown resort, and Oakley is concerned enough that its development code requires new subdivision applications to be weighed against their impact on ranching and farming.

“The lifestyle is going to change, no doubt about that. It already is. These guys come because of the utilities we have, and water is No. 1,” says Ken Woolstenhulme, who succeeded his father, Elmo, as Oakley’s mayor and served 12 years before yielding to Evans. Now he runs Ken’s Kash, the town’s general store, which sells bottled water from Oregon.

But regionalism is becoming a marketable commodity. Towns across the West that don’t have something unique to attract people are slouching into nonexistence, and communities are pushing to distinguish themselves so they can attract residents and tourists, thus ensuring a tax base and a future. It’s happening all over, from tiny Granville, N.D., which renamed itself after a schnapps for a liquor importer’s promotion, to tinier Chugwater, Wyo., which built a neighborhood chili recipe into a national online presence.

In Utah, where mining has waned and ranching has ebbed a bit, that’s an important endeavor.

“It shows a trend in rural communities to exploit what they see as their economic base, which is becoming tourism,” says Bim Oliver, coordinator of the Main Street Program in Utah’s Department of Community and Economic Development.

“They could even use it as a tool to facilitate growth in the community itself,” Oliver says. “They could say, ‘Come live in Oakley, where we’ve got the best water in the universe.’ Some places, you can go on the brewery tour. In Oakley, you could, I guess, go on a water tour.”

A Taste of the Ice Age

A soda cracker first, to cleanse the palate.

Then some possibilities. Stir up a glass of Pleistocene punch. Pop it into the freezer for an Ice Age ice cube. Or maybe the guy from the technical journal has the best idea: “I always figured 10,000-year-old water would go with 10-year-old scotch,” says Warren Wood, editor in chief of Ground Water.

The mayor liked it so much that he kept a Mason jar up by the well and would enjoy a drink every time he stopped by. But since the well was capped for the winter, where to procure a mouthful? City Hall?

“There’s some in the refrigerator downstairs, but it’s been sitting for a while,” Loughlin offered. Then he realized what he’d just said: “I guess that doesn’t matter.”

The fridge, unfortunately, was empty. Finally Loughlin mailed off a sample in a small vial marked “Oakley Humbug Well.” Evans called with some advice a couple of weeks later: “Make sure it’s well chilled.”

Unscrew the vial, then. Inhale the aroma of 18,000 years. Bring it to your lips and gulp. Swish it around a bit, contemplating mastodons and glaciers and giant sloths and Neanderthals. Then swallow--and assess.

Tastes like . . . water. A little flat, a touch sweet.

In other words, to most palates, like absolutely nothing. Not bad for an elixir that survived the messy history of the human race unpolluted, untouched, unchanged.

Come spring, the water, 650 gallons of it a minute, will be pumped into Oakley’s regular municipal system. It will require little treatment; not being mountain ground water, it is free of pesticides and herbicides and microbeasties with nasty names like Giardia and Cryptosporidium.

It will flow from Oakley faucets, moisten Oakley lawns, irrigate Oakley crops. It will serve as a beacon to other dry Western communities: Drill a little deeper; you might find the water you need.

Will they serve it up on ice at the Oakley rodeo? Probably. Will they shower with it and drink it in their coffee? Definitely. Will they market it to the world and join the ranks of Evian, Perrier, Poland Spring? Perhaps. Evans likes to drive up to Seymour Canyon and point out the spot where he envisions a bottling plant. It’s an impressive vista, indeed a place you’d want your water to come from. Just take a snapshot and put it on the label.

But it’s only water, isn’t it? Nothing special. Nothing but life’s most important component. And here, it’s a gift of geology and expertise and luck, ensuring that those who inhabit the crust above it have an easier time of things for a while.

The Humbug Well, such a nuisance to those long-ago silver miners, is now worth more to Oakley than any precious metal. For one town in the parched vastness of the American West, it’s worth the price of existence.