ARLINGTON — Thousands of years after glaciers rolled through the Pacific Northwest, they are causing big trouble for Lynne and John Jeffery.
A combination of ancient glacial deposits and new housing developments is making it increasingly difficult for the Jefferys and other homeowners in the traditionally rural area north of Arlington to find good, reliable sources of water.
When the Jefferys bought their $535,000 dream home, they never thought to worry about glaciers.
Married just a year and looking for a fresh start, they moved from California into their new country house on New Year’s Day 2006.
At first, everything seemed perfect.
The home was beautiful. With hardwood floors, high ceilings and craftsman-style architecture, it was the home they’d always wanted, but could never afford in the competitive California housing market.
In May, their well dried up.
Their honeymoon with the house was over.
For two months, while they waited for a new well to be drilled, they lived off water from neighboring homes. On the advice of the contractor who built their home, Haack Brothers Inc. of Lake Stevens, they linked hoses together and hooked them up to faucets of unoccupied houses. The borrowed water refilled their well.
In August, Haack Brothers Inc. paid to have a new well drilled in the couple’s back yard. The water the new well produced was gray and murky. The Jefferys say when it dried on their yard, it looked like concrete.
Because of the water’s unusual color and consistency, Haack Brothers Inc. installed an expensive water filtration system at the home, according to president Joel Haack.
But the Jefferys still aren’t happy.
John Jeffery cleans out the heavy-duty filter every week and is disgusted by the silt and dirt that clogs it. Even after the water goes through the filtration system, it looks cloudy to the Jefferys. They’re afraid to drink it and say the silt floating in it broke their washing machine, damaged their refrigerator and made them sick.
Now they’re suing.
They want Haack Brothers Inc. to buy back their house, so they can move somewhere with more reliable water.
“Neither of us have ever lived in an area like this before, so it’s like this is a new experience that we thought we’d love,” said Lynne Jeffery, a retired social services manager. “We love our home. It’s not that. We don’t have any issues with our house. It’s with water — and you need water to live.”
Haack Brothers Inc. bought the land their Countryside Meadows neighborhood sits on from a developer, who had already drilled the wells.
Joel Haack said he’s never been sued before and has spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to alleviate the Jefferys’ problem. However, he canceled plans to drill another well when they filed the lawsuit.
“I’m just disappointed in the whole thing,” he said. “It’d be one thing if it was a lawsuit over something I could control that I was guilty of, but this is just out of my control.”
The area where the Jefferys live, north of Arlington near Kackman Road, is notorious for its difficult-to-locate aquifers, said Al Butler, who’s been drilling wells for 46 years.
The rural area has plenty of water, but because of the way glaciers deposited water, rock and soil in tilted layers thousands of years ago, good, clean water can be difficult to reach, said Butler, owner of Wolfe Mechanical Services of Everett, a well-drilling company.
Until recently, hunting for water north of Arlington wasn’t much of a problem.
Homes in the area were located on large lots with dozens of acres and plenty of possible well locations. Poke enough holes and you were bound to find clean water.
The old-fashioned large lots now are giving way to housing developments such as Countryside Meadows, where the Jefferys live. The development features 10 homes on one-acre lots, a size that compounds the difficulty of finding quality water, said Butler, who drilled both the Jefferys’ wells.
“With more homes, you have more wells being put in,” he said. “Before, you could be contacted by a client and if he had a large piece of property, you could say, ‘Well, here’s a better place to drill than there.’ Now with these developments and lots that are on less than one acre, you get less of a choice of where wells are best drilled.”
One of the other homes in Countryside Meadows also experienced water problems, and it’s becoming more common in the area, Haack said.
“That whole area is known as a very tough area for large quantities of water,” he said. “So I know there’s been other cases of people having problems. I guess if you’re trying to put more wells into a tougher area, you’re going to notice it more.”
Adding to the problem is the influx of people who aren’t used to getting water from their own well, Butler said.
“People who come from a city environment have never experienced living in a rural capacity,” he said. “They’re used to having an unlimited amount of water to throw on the lawn and wash their vehicles. When they come to a place where they have to be a little more conservative, they don’t want to realize that.”
The Jefferys don’t think it’s unrealistic to want to water their maple and curly oaks, not to mention the tangerine tree they planted in their back yard.
They say it’s not unrealistic to want to turn on the taps and have water they’re comfortable drinking. And they should be able to do more than two loads of laundry a day, if necessary, they said.
“You have to wonder, if we’re having a water issue, how many other people in all the new homes will have water issues,” Lynne Jeffery said.
Her husband added, “When this is all said and done, we’re moving back to where there’s city water.”
Larry Altose, a spokesman for Department of Ecology, predicts that as more homes are built in rural areas, developers will increasingly choose to install community wells that enable several homes to tap into the same source. As the countryside becomes more suburban, he also expects public utilities to extend their pipes farther from city centers.
“Growth and more dense development is a theme we see throughout the northwestern part of the state,” he said. “That adds to the pressure on the water resource issue.”
Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.
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