Newport wells not producing

NEWPORT – Newport council members heard from city administrator Abby Gribi that Newport is facing more infrastructure woes. This time it’s the water system. She said two of the city’s highest producing wells that were put online about four years ago have dramatically dropped off in production.

“We have been seeing a decline in the production of those wells, pretty much since they were put online,” Gribi said. She said the city did cleanings of the wells and saw a slight increase for a time, but the wells went back to decreasing production.

She said the second well dried up completely. Gribi went to try to find hydrological report from when the wells were drilled. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t a hydrologist as part of that project,” she said.

She said she couldn’t tell council members why the wells were located where they were.

“But I can tell you they’re not producing right now,” she said. Because the two wells were offline over the weekend, the city turned to Idaho Water to keep the splash pad going at Newport City Park. She said the city used 49,000 gallons of water purchased from Idaho Water, Oldtown’s water supply.

Gribi said she has been in contact with state officials. “What we’re looking at is to do a city wide hydrology report,” Gribi said. “Where is the water, where can we consolidate wells.”

She said the city has seven wells “out at the well field.” “What would that look like to consolidate it to one well that could possibly produce 400 gallons a minute,” she said. The city would then look for a source for another commercial sized well.

“Then we would have two wells that would feed all of the system,” she said. That would require less operations and maintenance, less parts and less staff time. But it isn’t something that would happen right away, she said.

She said she’s only had the information about the wells not producing about two weeks and has been trying to come up with a plan ever since. She said just drilling another well isn’t the answer.

“Just blindly drilling a well isn’t going to get us anywhere,” she said. “We need some scientific basis.”

The wells, located on the South Bench, were brought online in 2018-2020.

At that time they were doing 130 to 150 gallons a minute, she said, but the two wells have dropped off significantly since.

She said the problems with the water system are similar to problems with the wastewater treatment plant.

“There just wasn’t a lot of improvements done,” she said.

Gribi said the water plant never seemed to work right.

'It’s always had some bugs, had some fixes,” she said.

She said the two wells, D and E, are online, they just don’t produce enough water. She said she was hopeful the wells would produce 20-35 gallons a minute from the one well. “We can’t even achieve that,” she said.

Councilmember Mark Zorica asked about fire flow. Gribi said that Newport had a tie with Idaho Water, through Oldtown. In an emergency, like a fire, the city would have enough water, she said.

'I know they can do 1,500 gallons a minute for an hour and not see a reduction,” Gribi said.

The problem comes from trying to maintain water pressure for residential use. Gribi said the Oldtown water allowed Newport to maintain enough water, but they really needed have more water pumped into the reservoirs to gain pressure. “We would not be able to maintain it.”

While the wells were the main problem, some sort of electrical problem with the computer that runs the water plant kicked things off. It took a couple weeks to get someone out to fix that. City utility workers were hopeful that the wells would recharge while the computer was down. That didn’t happen the way they hoped, Gribi said.

Councilmember Nathan Longly asked if the city could use river water.

Gribi said the treatment plant wasn’t rated to do that. 'It’s a completely different type of treatment,” she said. As a municipality, she said the city had enough water rights, for current use and future growth.

“Our water rights are fine,” she said. 'It’s holding capacity.”

Longley asked if consolidating reservoirs was an option.

Gribi said no, that water pressure requirements meant that at least two reservoirs were needed.

She said that any new reservoirs would likely be paid for by developers.