THE WELL THAT NEARLY SWALLOWED A HOUSE

It was so cold this past Friday that my friend, Dale’s, flowing well froze. He lives south of Rudyard and said his thermometer read minus 14 degrees that morning. The air had a frigid bite and snow squeaked as it does when it’s very cold. Flowing wells are great for people with livestock or who need ponds. They flow steadily, year around, a constant supply of fresh water from deep aquifers. Dale has a hundred chickens so needs the water for them.

But they’re not without potential problems. I remember a day several years ago when I got a call from my friend, Suzanne. We worked together in the environmental health division of Chippewa County Health Department and got excited about things to do with the soil and water. So when she called me to go look at a house that was being swallowed by water, I had to go along.

The site was a hunting camp in the south part of the county where somebody had tried to tap his own well. Unfortunately, he punctured an aquifer that was under tremendous pressure. Water was coming up around the outside of the metal casing that had been pushed down into the ground. It poured forth in such quantities that it surrounded the cabin and flooded the woods as far as I could see. The ground was eroding in an ever-widening area, threatening to swallow the cabin, outbuildings and driveway in the deepening lake that was being formed. By the time we arrived, the cabin had been jacked up. Planks had been laid down creating a bridge from the driveway to the house.

He’d had the bad luck to encounter a water supply under the kind of pressure that creates the flowing wells that can last for years in this area. My father-in-law remembers his own father’s well being drilled 90 years ago at their Rudyard farm. I visited the well a few weeks ago. The house and the barn have disappeared and the land is covered with hay. But the well’s there, still flowing.

That kind of pressure is created by thick clay that covers so much of the eastern Upper Peninsula, clay too dense to penetrate. Water in an aquifer flows along slowly beneath this clay. When an escape hatch is provided, such as the straw-like tube that a well borehole is, water spurts out like a volcanic eruption

Flowing wells are common in the EUP. Well drillers are equipped to handle this kind of pressure. Most private citizens are not. The powerful flow at the hunting camp eventually subsided and the buildings didn’t disappear. The land-owner was lucky.

Also, Dale thawed his well. His chickens’ water supply is safe. And those of us who rely on Dale’s fresh local eggs will thankfully continue to be supplied.