‘Pump and dump’ prompts need for new well pump at Colton

Colton city council last week authorized Public Works Director Bill Frye to get a cost estimate for lowering a pump in one of the city’s wells. Because of a drop in the water table, the pump, which is located 100 feet below the surface, keeps shutting down. Automatic sensors shut the pump off when the water level in the well drops too low.

Frye said the water table drop is believed to be the result of Colton’s adherence to a state mandate to pump 85,000 gallons a day into Union Flat Creek. The mandate is the result of Colton’s role in trading water rights linked to the proposed Hawkins project at the stateline on Highway 270.

Frye said the well, one of three Colton wells that are located on Steptoe Street across from the Catholic Church, is not the one being used to pump water into the creek. However, it is located about 40 feet from the well which has been pumping water into the creek and that is drawing the water table down.

Colton has been scheduled to pump the water between June 15 and September as a mitigation under a schedule set by the Department of Fish & Wildlife. The “pump and dump” offsets part of the water right Colton acquired from Jerry Maley of LaCrosse.

The Maley trade, part of a three-way agreement which provided ground water rights to the Hawkins project, provided Colton with 100 acre feet per year water right which they are not expected to need in 20 years.

Frye said the actual well is 293 feet deep, and the plan will be to lower the present pump, now at 100 feet, lower down into the well below the draw down of the water table. The pump is suspended on a four-inch pipe, and the project will involve adding more pipe at the top end.

The pump can produce approximately 225 gallons a minute.

Frye was asked to get a cost estimate from Strom Electric in Troy, the company which has done the town installation. Frye hopes to have an estimate to report at the next council session.

Colton residents have not been impacted by the well shutdowns because the town is normally supplied out of the larger 300 gallon per minute well, Frye explained.