Provided by Chris Woodry Well-diggers watching the return from Chris Woodry’s well earlier this week.

After six weeks without water, wells at the waterless residences on Cole’s Creek Road are being dug. At least two have been finished, including Sheila Peltier’s and Chris Woodry’s.

“Now we’re just waiting for the trenching and hook up,” Peltier said.

She said she is not sure when that will be done.

“Is it going to be immediately usable once it’s hooked up? I don’t know yet,” Peltier said.

In order to afford the well-digging, the Peltiers had to refinance their home.

“We were down to probably seven years left on our house, and now we’re back up to 15,” Peltier said. “And again, I still don’t have a bill. So I don’t know how much it’s gonna cost.”

The cost of well-digging can vary greatly depending on what kind of rocks and soils are encountered, the necessary depth to reach potable water, the width of the bore hole and the method used. According to homeguide.com, the average cost of a well is $3,750 – $15,300, but can cost over $30,000 in some circumstances. Woodry said he’s paying about $61 per foot. A screen, if necessary, pump, and other equipment is extra.

Peltier had inquired about refinancing their home at the bank, before their water was cutoff without notice, while working on a financial plan to eventually dig a well.

“Well, I was turned down, because at that time I wasn’t working,” Peltier said.

Peltier, who works in the travel industry, was laid off because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She went back to work a week after the water line to her home was destroyed.

“I did have no option prior to that,” she said.

She said refinancing was the only way they could keep a “snowy day” fund available for emergencies.

The residents had looked into digging a single, shared well, to save money and return to a system similar to what they had in the past. They found that a shared well has a negative impact on property value, and that in addition to construction costs, they would have to pay attorney’s fees to draw up shared maintenance and liability agreements. They collectively decided against it.

“I mean, you see the headache that shared something has brought to Cole’s Creek,” Woodry said.

The wells along Cole’s Creek have not been consistent. According to Woodry, the new wells dug for him and his neighbors, only a few feet apart, have very different outputs.

“Mine was 44 feet with 42.5 gallon-a-minute refresh, which is really good,” Woodry said. “And I have a 25 foot reserve. So I got a pretty good well.”

Woodry said one of his neighbors, with a well at about the same depth as his, has a flow rate of 14 or 15 gpm, “which is still really good”. The other was 250 feet deep and only produces about 2.8 gpm, “which is awful.”

The average for wells dug in Michigan between 2010 and 2017, according to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, is 27 gpm. Five gallons per minute is considered the rough standard for meeting daily needs.

“So we are very erratic in our area,” Woodry said.

While waiting for the well and hook-up to be finished, lack of water continues to complicate the residents’ lives. 

The Peltier’s refitted closed-loop radiant heating continued to act up for weeks into October’s cold weather.

“It got down to 59 degrees a few nights,” Peltier said.

She and her husband relied on electric heaters to keep the temperature livable.

“That happened to us too, after the flood,” Peltier said, “When we didn’t have our new furnace installed until the end of October, too.”

She said it feels like they’re back in 2018, after the flood, all over again. There is one big difference.

“This was a man made issue, not an act of God,” Peltier said.

In the mornings, now that Peltier is working again, she has been getting up and leaving, making an extra stop at her daughter’s house to shower and get ready for work, every day.

Woodry said it is a relief to see some movement toward normalcy. He said it will be nice when he and his girlfriend don’t have to take laundry somewhere else to wash and take showers and fill up jugs to use when flushing the toilet at home.