Dry well assistance. Totally OT question

I live in SE Arizona, SE Cochise county Sulphur Springs Valley area. Many domestic wells in our area have gone dry. Our well has been marginal for a couple of years. I could no longer have a lawn, flowers, no garden. Now just laundry drains our pressure tanks and it takes a few hours to refill them. Our pump will run until the thermal switch shuts them off. I have two, both 32 gallon hooked together. Looks like we are down to strictly house use. People who have lost their water , and there are many in our area , must haul their own from a fire station 15 miles away or have it delivered by a very unsavory person that has a water company for a settlement 5 miles away. He is expensive My question, does anyone know of any federal or state assistance that will help in this situation. My wife and I are both on Social Security and $12,000 to have our well deepened is totally out of the question for us.

USDA ?


https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/water-waste-disposal-loan-grant-program/az

Arizona Department of Water Resources
1110 W Washington Street Suite 310
Phoenix, AZ 85007
Phone: 602.771.8500 Fax: 602.771.868

If you have a PU, you might consider a poly tank and haul your own. A couple of valves and some hose
you could run on a straight, haul your own system.(my in laws hauled all of their water for 30
years,1000 gal at a time 25 miles one way). He did have a truck big enough to haul the tank.

If it don’t rain and snow soon there ain’t gonna be no water to buy or haul from any amount unsavory persons .

If you have other rural households in the area, USDA Rural Development may be able to assist you all in development of a rural water system. Talk to both of the above resources, I'm sure there are programs out there to help you. Start with the state first, they know how to get the feds involved.

You, as an individual, probably can't tap into public funds. But a group of people with similar problems/issues can form a non-profit and get things done. Talk to farmers & ranchers in the area, too. I wish I was closer, this is exactly what I did for a living for 32 years. I helped folks with problems just like you are describing solve them.

One of the groups that I worked with ended up with a rural water system with a million dollar well that was just under 4,000 feet deep. It would produce 160 gallons per minute. There were 13 household and 8 pasture taps (21 taps total), a 121,000 gallon storage tank on 109 miles of pipeline. Average monthly cost per user was $75.00 per tap per month, plus $2.00/1,000 gallons used after the first 2,000 gallons. Initial hookup fee was $1,500 (I think). That was back in 2009/2010, so I'm not sure what the rates would be now. The base monthly tap fee was set up to pay amortization of the loan needed to match the grants they got to build much of the system.

That particular system had the highest %age of grant of any project that I ever worked on. Given the current circumstances, I doubt if there is much grant money around, but there might be a lot of grant $ available in the neat future. Remember, this was at an opportune time because there was infrastructure grant money that became available in an effort to boost the economy. Remember the 2008 recession?

Yes we hauled water for about 8 yrs. But just 6 miles round trip. My wife hauled 2 to 3 500 gal loades in a new 75 F100 4x4. Welded short pipes to brackets that shortened springs, so would haul that much. We finally got together and hired a grant writer. And got city water! Took about 5 yrs though. But finally moved into the 20th century. If you have a rural electric coop. They should be looking into water also.and internet

Have you thought about a really small pump. One that just pumps a quart a minute. Or just pinch yours down to quart a minute. Then pump it into a 1000 gallon or so tank.takes another pump. That would be 380 gal a day. I had a well that would just make 2 quarts a minute and would just pump 6 to 8 gallon before running dry. Worked for me.

Have you thought about large storage and put your pump on a timer filling this tank slowly day and night. This requires a second pump.

I'm surprised none of the water witchers who come out of the woodwork anytime someone is trying to find a buried line have volunteered to help you out. Apparently when it comes to fixing a dried-up well, cold hard cash beats out a couple of bent welding rods.

You're in a tough spot and it's not going to get any better. As your neighbors go deeper for water, that's just going to pull the water table down further. Have you gotten quotes from any well drillers? It seems to me they shouldn't need to drill a new well, just go deeper with your existing well. Also, maybe you have a bad pump and you just need a new one.

I have a low performing well. I installed a 500 gallon black poly tank and have water trickling in through an ice maker tap valve set up and it is only partially open. The float valve is an ordinary commode tank fill valve mounted inside the poly tank. (new of course). As stated by others below it requires a second pump set up to push the water to the house. Still much cheaper than a new well. You'd be surprised how much water you can get through a 1/4 inch line overnight. After several years no water shortage. HTH. TDF

In Utah if you are a public water supplier, or if I remember a private water supplier, there is a state committee that helps these systems when they have problems. The help is either through low cost loans or grants depending on several factors. My mother was the chair of this committee for a few years and there were times that several million dollars would go through this committee. I thought about applying for her opening when she time limited out but I did not have the time to do it.

You don't want the pump running with no water in it. You can get a pressure switch with a low pressure cut off that will shut off the pump when it runs out of water and the pressure drops, then you have to manually reset the switch. I like the idea others have of a large storage tank. Filling it with a very slow steady stream, slow enough that your existing well can keep up, then you can draw out large amounts when needed. Maybe just a shallow well pump to boost the pressure from this tank to the house. Filling the large tank with the existing pump and a valve you can set to a trickle.

The answer to a low flow well is a Pumpsaver. It is an electronic device that goes in your pump control box. Cost about $125. It senses when pump runs dry and shuts it off. Turns on after pre determined time.

No water for your lawn or flowers.....some areas are meant to be dry. I don't want to start an argument, but people move to those area and 1st thing they want is a lawn like they had in the mid-west not always practical

One of my hay customers had water supply issues. They went to catching a lot of rain water from gutter on their buildings for livestock use and have a system that runs the well pump on and off all night which fills a storage tank in the basement. This allows them to store up adequate water with the well which has a slow recovery. Perhaps you could get a similar system. They dealt with our local well driller for the system.

If there is a lot of agriculture in your area, they have probably drilled wells much deeper than yours, and you are screwed! People of Arizona don't want the government telling them wat the can't do, and this is the consequences. We are in Apache junction for the winter, and it has always bothered me how much water is wasted. The city library tries to have a green lawn, that should never be allowed, but as long as Roosevelt lake has water in it they will waste it. It hasn't rained here for 107 days, but it's supposed to tomorrow.

You can come get a load from me,probably 99% of the water that comes out of the springs on my place goes down the Jame River into the Atlantic Ocean.I don't think the Atlantic will miss a few thousand gallons.(LOL)

"People who have lost their water , and there are many in our area , must haul their own from a fire station 15 miles away or have it delivered by a very unsavory person that has a water company for a settlement 5 miles away. He is expensive "

What is considered "expensive"? The cost of the water might not be much, but the hauling, delivery and labor might be the majority of the price.

Talk to your neighbors and also your county and township commissioners. Often there is all kinds of support for municipal projects like that until people find out the real costs. Even when there are large 90 percent subsidies, support dries up when people find out it isn't totally free to them.

Quite a bit of center pivot irrigation in you area (maybe - you did not say exactly where you are, but lots of CP irrigation just east of the Sulphur Springs valley). It sounds like you need to form some kind of water board or governance board for the area. It would not take long for those CP wells to suck the entire area dry.

That is totally the case. There are many farms in our area that water crops with the pivot system. Also many pecan and pistachio orchards as well as many vineyards. The farmers have been drilling wells like crazy for a few years. Often two or three per pivot. They are drilling anywhere from 700 feet to well over 1000 feet. Domestic wells in my area range anywhere from 300 feet to 450 , 500 feet. Almost all wells in the 300 foot range have gone dry. Ours is 309 and our pump is set at 307' It has been an issue looked at by the state with no action taken. There was even a story on national TV about the problem Again nothing was done. It is sad to see how many homes have been abandoned with people just walking away and leaving behind all that they have worked for. We have been here foe 22 years and it would take me a couple of years to remove everything I have built and accumulated. I have been building a two axle trailer and getting a tank put on it for awhile. Now I have to find out what kind of pump and set up I need to plumb it into my home.

I would love to be able to harvest rain water... if it ever rained.

I am not a midwest transplant . I have lived in Cochise County AZ all my life. I have always had a nice yard and a large garden as have many other families. This water issue only became a problem in the last couple of years. It got worse when a dairy farm 5 miles from my place with 85,000 head was put in within the last year.

My well pump is controlled by a 30-50 pressure switch which pumps into a bladder pressure tank and set up with a thermal shut off. As long as it has enough water going through it to keep it cool it will pump although not a great volume.

That sounds like a good plan, a lot of folks around here (Apache Junction) have water tanks on trailers that they bring to town to fill, and I don't think it's too expensive to buy water if you haul it yourself. We are on city water, but it's not drinkable, but we can buy good filtered drinking water for 10 to 25 cents a gallon. If we lived here year around I would put in our own reverse osmosis filter.

I didn't read all of the replies, and it surely has already been mentioned, but we have dribbled our low performing well into a cistern for about 30 years. I have a float shutoff valve in the cistern to keep it from overfilling. It requires a shallow well pump to pump water FROM the cistern. I have the cistern input flow from the well shut down to just faster than a drip - I call it a dribble. It keeps the 2000 gallon cistern full. It's trouble free - I rarely have to even glance at it. Before we drilled the well, we had a natural spring that produced about 300 gallons per day. I used the same setup on the spring, but I also had a sump pump switch rigged up that would break power to the spring pump when it was close to cavitating. It also worked flawlessly for many years.

You probably already know this - they make a $20 pressure switch that will kill power to your pump when the system pressure drops below about 20 psi. The bad news is you will have to manually re-set the switch every time it trips. I personally would not want my deep well pump using the heat limit switch to regulate its operation. I see how it would be convenient in that it re-sets itself, but the thought troubles me. . .

I meant to say "they make a $20 pressure switch that will kill power to your pump when the system pressure drops below about TEN psi."

I'm sorry for the typo - or mind slip. . .