The Oakley City Council and Mayor Zane Woolstenhulme celebrated the town’s new well with a toast Sept. 28.
They raised their glasses—of water—above what is likely one of the deepest wells in the county, at 2,003 feet.
“This is Oakley's third well, and we also have a spring source,” resident water expert and planning commissioner Doug Evans said. “But this well equals four times what all the other sources are, combined, in volume.”
He said right now it’s flowing at 1,400 gallons per minute, and once a pump is installed, that will jump to 2,500 gallons every 60 seconds. With the pump, that’s 3 million gallons of water every day—more than six Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Evans said that’s a big deal. The city thought it could double the water supply, but the well is producing much more than that.
“Because when you do these types of wells, it's never a 100% guarantee. You're usually going to hit water, but you don't know if you're going to hit very much. And this turned out to be better than expected,” Evans said. “It really goes to a city that had the foresight to do this.”
He thanked the scientists and drillers who worked on the project: Bill Loughlin of Loughlin Water Associates and Alan Lang of Lang Equipment, which did the actual drilling.
The well is located near the mouth of Pinon Canyon and drilled into the ancient Weber Formation of sandstone and quartzite. The Weber Formation’s age is partly why the well has to be so deep.
Evans said scientists are carbon-dating the new well water to see when it was last on Earth’s surface.
“We expect it's very old water. It's probably been kept underground for thousands of years,” he said.
It’s crystal clear too.
Water clarity is measured in nephelometric turbidity units, a measure of how much gunk is in water based on how much light can pass through it.
In keeping with World Health Organization recommendations, Utah says drinking water cannot have a turbidity of more than 5 NTUs. Evans said Oakley’s new well water is 2 NTUs.
But clarity doesn’t necessarily guarantee safety. The final round of testing will be done in about a month.
Oakley also needs to build the pipes to deliver the new water to town. Evans estimates that work will be done next spring.
