First deep well drilled for Mosier orchard

But, it’s finally done and has been in service for several months now, Molesworth said.

With water levels in the three aquifers serving Mosier dropping precipitously over the last four decades, two separate projects are underway to hopefully stop or reverse the decline.

One is replacing up to 15 mostly residential wells that are improperly accessing multiple aquifers at the same time, which is called commingling. The state allocated $1 million for the work, earning it the title “Mosier Million.”

The other grant-funded project, slated to cost $1.3 million, was drilling two new deeper wells for Molesworth and fellow orchardist Wade Root, who between them use the most water from the aquifer system.

The new wells would tap into a much deeper, previously unused fourth aquifer, called the Grand Ronde, releasing the upper three aquifers for other users.

Molesworth’s well was the first on the list, and it provided such severe challenges that it blew through almost the entire budget that was meant to do both wells, said Josh Thompson, senior conservation planner with the Wasco County Soil and Water Conservation District and project manager for the well projects.

Molesworth said, “We thought the wells would cost maybe $500,000 apiece. Well, we were wrong, really wrong. We started doing it in June of last year and we didn’t get the dang thing finished until a couple months ago. You can imagine a great big well rig, big enough to drill oil. It costs a lot of money.”

But now, he actually has surprisingly warm water – it’s approximately 77 degrees -- with a neutral pH, so it “answered all our irrigation needs.”

Thompson said the Grand Ronde water is “warm enough to almost heat a house. It’s a good property to have for an orchard because it can be used for crop protection in cold weather.

In a cold snap, the evaporative effective of warm water can warm the air and keep the buds from freezing.

Molesworth’s well, pump and power service installation ended up costing just shy of $1 million, Thompson said. Since the orchardists each agreed to a 25 percent personal match, Molesworth’s share was around $250,000.

The conservation district will know in August if it won a grant to do the second well, Thompson said.

Going into uncharted territory, nobody knew what would happen when they hit the aquifer, some 1,100 feet below ground. The deeper the aquifer, the higher the water pressure, and once the well driller tapped into the aquifer, the water pressure was so great that water shot up the drilled hole to within 30 feet of the surface, Thompson said.

Kris McNall, co-chair of the Mosier Watershed Council, said, “Basically the problem is they punched into this high amount of high pressure water and they needed to seal it, and that’s where the technical challenges came.”

In proper well construction, first, a bore hole is drilled down into the earth. Then a pipe called a casing is placed into the hole. Then grout is poured around the narrow gap between the casing and the bore hole, for the entire length of the bore hole, as a seal. That is a key step to prevent a well from accessing non-target aquifers it passes through. Finally, a pump and smaller pipe is dropped down the casing to bring the water up for use.

Thompson estimated the Molesworth well was producing perhaps 1,000 gallons a minute at 500 pounds of pressure. For comparison, a fire hose uses up to 400 pounds of pressure.

He said, “For awhile, we made a giant commingling well. Nobody knows how many gallons a minute were flowing out the hole into the upper aquifer, but it wasn’t good.”

But the well driller knew the tricks of the trade to stabilize the concrete just long enough to get it to set up, McNall said. She said “the state and county people cannot speak highly enough” of the deep well driller.

The man on the job was Dwayne Person, of Person Pump and Well Drilling out of Goldendale. Person is “very experienced,” Thompson said. “He was really a good guy for the job, but it was really challenging, they pumped lots of cement down the hole.”

McNall said she’s seen video of the well “just vomiting out quantities of grout.”

Molesworth has 400 acres of cherries to irrigate, making him the biggest user in the Mosier aquifer system, Thompson said. He has senior water rights, giving him the ability to use all the water he needs, and he’d been using anywhere from 350 to 500 gallons per minute for his irrigation needs during growing season from the same aquifer that everyone else was using, Thompson said.

Molesworth said agreeing to drill the deeper well wasn’t a matter of running out of water currently, but a potential future of running out. Both agricultural wells had been declining for years. “If we wanted to pass anything on to the next generation it might have been touch and go,” Molesworth said.

“The idea was we would take this demand off those aquifers that were in trouble and allow us more time to fix the problem wells that were commingling and leaking away,” he said. “It was a good thing for us personally but it was also a good thing for the community to buy time because the two of us were using quite a bit of water. Well, we still are, but now it’s from a different source.”

Root’s well is about 300 feet higher in elevation than Molesworth’s.

Root said it was good for Molesworth to go first in a way because that was the learning experience, but it could also be bad for Root to go second, in case the second grant isn’t approved.

But Root said the well driller, who won the bid to do both wells, and will do the second if funding comes through, has a high degree of confidence that there shouldn’t be any surprises with the second well.

Root estimates his personal match for the project will be around $200,000.

Root feels the success of the first well will help with the second grant. “Cost overrun, yes, but in the end product, it’s new water, it’s down deeper and it takes him out of the aquifers that are stressed and he’s got enough water to continue farming.”

Root’s great-grandfather came to Mosier in 1878 and soon started a cherry orchard. Over his lifetime, he’s seen an evolution of irrigation methods that use less and less water. He consulted with people in Israel about the current drip method he uses.

If they hadn’t done anything, “I don’t think we’d be farming in a couple years because the water table is still dropping and that will affect everybody who is using this water. I think it is pretty imperative we get out of there,” Root said of the existing three aquifers.

Orchardists have water rights, meaning they have first right to use water, even before residential uses.

Thompson said Molesworth “did this with more than himself in mind. He had the water that he needed,” but knew that future aquifer declines would affect not only his livelihood, but the whole community.

Molesworth said the idea of tapping into a deeper aquifer came from Ken Lite, a now semi-retired state hydrogeologist who wrote the first report in 1988 about dropping water levels in Mosier aquifers.

Thompson said it will take a couple years to see how effective it’s been to tap into the new deeper aquifer and also replace the 15 other commingling wells.

“If we did things right we should see an upward trend. At the minimum we hope to at least sustain the levels in the aquifers and not see any more decline,” he said.