Water well back online—sort of…

“It appears that the gamble paid off,” Moulton Alderman Craig Hughes said recently, just minutes before
the special-called city council meeting was called to order on Tuesday, May 17.

That meeting focused on completely different topics—a review of the city’s safety ordinances and a
salary review a few key city employees (see related stories)—so when Hughes tried to update council on
the city’s Well No. 4, city attorney Eddie Escobar advised against it.

Still, it has been an item of keen interest in Moulton, especially when Well No. 4 ceased to produce
water in February. That it was set to begin pumping within hours at that time mattered not, Escobar
said, as it wasn’t on that day’s agenda.

The situation was dire already in April. Lack of rain had shallow water aquifers had Moulton’s Wells No.
2 and No. 3 producing at half capacity. How the city might survive the summer was a very real concern.

Sadly, fixes were few. The last few years of conservative city spending provided some cushion in the
budget. But nothing short serious investment would cover a new well and all the necessary
accoutrement to bring it online.

Nor would it fund tapping other water resources. Pipelines are hardly cheap, and that wouldn’t cover
the cost of buying the water itself—if, that is, Moulton successfully managed t get one of its neighbors
to part with some of theirs.

Although grant possibilities were on the horizon soon for many in the Golden Crescent, Hughes said no
one will know how much that might be or what sorts of strings might be attached. Seems there’s still
some leftover federal Hurricane Harvey Aid.

“The Golden Crescent is developing the funding formulas and MODs (method of delivery) for those
funds now, which will then need to get approved by the Texas General Land Office and HUD (U.S.
Housing & Urban Development Office),” said Hughes, who also serves as the city’s representative to the
regional planning commission. “Still, none of that will become available at any point during the current
fiscal cycle,” he said.

Before they can finance such an undertaking—new wells or pipeline backups to water sources
elsewhere—Moulton needs extensive engineering studies done, which also isn’t in the budget right
now.

They were stuck between a very costly place or an extremely dry one that was proving hard to
overcome.

Thankfully, Hughes also spent much of his adult life in the oil and gas industry solving similar quandaries
that dealt with ornery underground formations, varied drilling concerns technologies, and the ever-
present production uncertainties that now plagued the city’s water supply.

Chief among those, especially with Moulton’s Well No. 4, is that nothing is ever certain when it comes to
drilling.

Still, Hughes said he saw promise. Just to be he sure, he even ran the numbers past some old industry
colleagues. They agreed. It showed potential. Possibly even promise.

Neither, however, quenches your thirst. And it certainly didn’t help matters that Well No. 4 was the
city’s newest and—thus far—most expensive well.

That didn’t work. It stopped producing in February.

Being the “newest well” doesn’t mean much, really. It’s 25-years-old, hardly a pup by industry
standards. But Well No. 1 is three times that at 75. It was drilled Oct. 30, 1946, city records show, and
Wells No. 2 (1953) and No. 3 (1971) weren’t much better.

So, Well No. 4’s 1996 birthdate is downright infantile by comparison. The combined age of the city’s
other three wells—the ones that work, mind you—is just six years shy of two full centuries of wear and
tear, which is what the city continues to depend on for water right now.

From the beginning, however, Well No. 4 always had issues. It took three full months to bring it online,
city records show, and despite being a third the age of the city’s eldest, you’d never know it from the
repair log. Well No. 4, at 25, now has more maintenance/repair records than the city’s 75-year-old Well
No. 1.

While a complete price tag is not readily available (because of multiple changes in the city’s financial
software prior to city administrator LuAnn Rogers’ arrival in Moulton five years ago), city minutes show
costs approaching ¾ of a million dollars with just three items accounted for.

It cost $287,200 to drill and bring online in 1996; $127,770 to fix in 2015; and an estimated $270,270
this time around, and that omits roughly a dozen other repairs that were not free. Assured, nobody
would have paid that much when Well No. 1 went in.

But here’s the real kicker: $41,500 is all it cost to simply plug it and call it done. Thirsty. But done.
So, Hughes sold his fellow council members on a step-by-step process that essentially took that chance
of possibly rehabbing the well, always with the option of calling it quits and sealing it off, should any of
those steps fail.

That final step was never needed, Hughes said Monday when the newspaper touched base with him
again at Moulton’s Memorial Day observances held at the city cemetery.

It was back up and functional once more, he said, and had done a fine job of filling the duck pond at City
Park these last few days. It still wasn’t back up as a functional water supply source yet, pending the
stringent testing the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality demands of municipal water supplies.

Hughes said he anticipates TCEQ approval in about a week. Still, even with successes to report Monday,
he said the city is far from in the clear when it comes to its water supply.

“This buys some time is all,” he said. “We’re still going to need to bite that bullet and secure some new
wells online if we’re ever to grow and succeed as a city.”

Mayor pro-tem Donald Wagner, also in attendance at Monday’s Memorial Day observances, agreed.
He’s long pointed to the city’s water supply, treatment facilities and wastewater facilities as definite
needs the city needs to address, sooner or later. April’s shortage scare provided a perfect example as to
why.

“This basically gets back to where we were a year ago, but it hardly puts in a comfortable position for
the future,” he said. “Our water supply is not something we can afford to gamble with. I just hope that
we’ll be able to land some of the grants that are available moving forward. We got lucky this time, but
this isn’t something we can afford to put off anymore.”