Friesen updates board on well status
Hampton Village Board members heard a candid report on the community’s water supply status Monday, reviewing possible options being considered to address rising nitrate levels.
Utility Supt. Chris Friesen shared a preliminary overview at a March 28 public meeting, and went into further detail Monday on the city’s two wells. The 841 well, as it’s known, was taken off line two years ago when nitrate levels were measured at 11.3 parts per million, well above the 10 ppm maximum allowed by law, Friesen began.
“We should be getting parts within the next four weeks to put a stainless steel packer in, which is basically putting a diaphragm in to see if we can pull more (water) off the bottom rather than the top where the nitrates are,” he explained. “Terry Smith (who helped design the system years ago) said this is our only option, so if that doesn’t work we’re on to Plan B, which is to start looking for a new well; or Plan C, which is reverse osmosis.”
Friesen urged the board to consider taking action soon, since the lone remaining well has recorded rising nitrate levels as well, recently tested at 6.94 ppm.
“It’s gone up 2-1/4 points in the last two years,” he said. “If this packer system works, maybe we put one down this well also.”
Friesen has been working with Miller & Associates out of Kearney for more than a year working on a solution for the 841 well, though he said his radar went up another notch after attending a recent wellhead protection meeting.
“This is just talk, as there is nothing in writing yet so I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but the EPA is talking about dropping the nitrate level to 5,” he said. “Right now it’s at 10. I don’t know that we have any choice other than to start looking at reverse osmosis. I don’t know what else we can do to ensure we have government-regulated water here we can drink.”
Reverse osmosis, commonly referred to as RO, is a technology used to remove a large majority of contaminants from water by pushing the water under pressure through a semi-permeable membrane. It’s been proven effective, Friesen said, though it’s an expensive way to treat the water supply for an entire village.
“I heard that Phillips is working on the same thing and they were talking $3 to $4 million for an RO system,” he said. “So I mean it’s a huge chunk of money.”
Installing an RO system in Hampton would require a 40x60 building to be built somewhere around the water tower, something Friesen said should be researched sooner than later.
“I think we should really start being proactive because who knows if the EPA is going to do this,” he said. “It’s just talk right now, but if they do, every community in the United States almost is going to be in the same boat.”
Friesen went on to say that an engineering company has done some testing in the area looking for possible well sites, reporting that the village would have to go out a good distance to find lower nitrate readings.
“Chris Miller with Miller & Associates did say that there is water north of town, but he did not say how far we would have to go,” Friesen said. “I know a lot of country houses are way higher (with water nitrate readings) than that right now. You have to remember that it will cost like a million dollars a mile for pipe (to be installed from the well site to the village).”
The lowest cost option he said may be to try and improve the readings on the existing well, which comes back to the pending experiment with the diaphragm approach planned for late spring.
“I have to think like a water operator and we may only have three more years,” he said. “Maybe this will stabilize it out a little bit. I have no idea what it will do. If this packer system works and we put one on (the main well) it could buy us some more time.”
Looking back over his time as utility superintendent in Hampton, Friesen said the nitrate readings have for whatever reason fluctuated over time.
“It’s been going up the last five years and we haven’t dropped at all,” he said. “The one year when I first started here, I think the 911 well was like 3.75 (ppm) and it dropped down to 3.25 or something. That’s when we were having all that rain so I’m assuming that helped out with the aquifer levels coming up so we weren’t pumping as much off the top.”
Board members took no action Monday, though Friesen said he would keep them advised as to the timing and results of the planned spring/summer testing.