County couple got lucky when drill hit gusher

It happened gradually.

Jody Bart would do two loads of laundry and the dishes. Then nothing would come out of her faucet.

Bart would turn off her well’s pump, and wait several hours for the water in the well to rise.

“Every time it would do that, it would come back with less and less water each time,” said Bart, who lives in Amherst County.

That was when Bart and her husband, Glenn, knew they would need a new well, which could cost up to $6,500. It took about six months to save enough money before drilling could begin last month.

They would need a fair amount of luck, too. Northern Amherst County is one of the more challenging areas to drill a well because the bluish gray bedrock is soft and grainy, said Falwell Corp. lead driller Virgil Nuckols.

“It just don’t have any fractures. You have to go real deep to get water, if you get it at all.”

That wasn’t the news the Barts wanted to hear. They run a small animal sanctuary on about 20 acres in Clifford, not far from the Nelson County line. They bought the land 4½ years ago and drew their water from a 160-foot well near the top of a hill – a well that served the former owner for many years.

In May, the situation became critical. The well was barely producing 20 gallons of water a day. The goats alone drank 40 gallons per day; the dogs needed at least 15.

“If it was just my husband and I, it wouldn’t have been such an emergency,” Bart said. “But with these animals, it certainly is.”

During the last year, Bart would fill empty plastic jugs wherever she could find potable water and bring it home for the animals.

That wasn’t even addressing the household needs, where Bart and her husband would flip a coin to see who could bathe for the day. Months of laundry piled up and birdcages were cleaned with vinegar.

“Nothing will tax a marriage like the water running out,” Bart said.

When Falwell Corp. got the call, drill department director Mark Lloyd immediately cleared his team’s schedule and started the process for an emergency well.

Normally state permits take between three and four weeks, but they were able to get clearance within four business days. As soon as the final OK came from Miss Utility, a service that ensures they won’t hit underground utility lines, the drilling began.

Lloyd’s crew uses a 65,000-pound drilling rig that’s built to bore through solid rock. Depending on how hard the rock is, it can take 10 minutes to drill 20 feet, Falwell Corp. Vice President Charles Falwell said. Most wells the company bores are between 350 and 400 feet deep.

The deafening noise from the rig echoed off hills and bellowed through the hollows. Large cooling fans sent a hot dry wind across the dirt-covered pasture where three horses hid from the commotion.

The rig, mounted on a truck, stood more than 30 feet in the air. Directly downhill from the drill hole, a temporary blue ribbon of pulverized rock formed as the cooling water carried the dust away.

The team was planning to hit 400 feet, but at about 260 feet the bit crushed through what seemed to be a massive fracture.

Water immediately started bubbling up through the drill and rushing down the hillside, washing away the dust stream.

It was a gusher — a well producing possibly more than 50 gallons per minute. Driller’s helper Chris Ayers ran up to the house to get Bart. Once Bart saw the torrents and occasional blast of water 30 feet into the air, she started screaming and jumping in excitement.

Lloyd then handed Nuckols a dollar bill and tells him to go buy a lottery ticket. It’s a gusher, “and in Clifford, no less,” he shouted.

They’ve never hit so much water in that area and there’s concern that the flow would slow, Lloyd said.

But it doesn’t; it just keeps coming and starts to overwhelm the drill. The estimated flow now is much more than initially thought.

“That’s an unusually generous well,” Lloyd said. “If we drill 150 wells a year around here, we might get one or two of that type of well.”

Lately, business for new wells has almost dried up because the residential housing market has slowed or developers are connecting to public water, Falwell said. The bulk of residential work these days comes from those in Bart’s situation — homeowners with an old shallow well that’s dried up.

Unlike the old well, Bart’s new well was several hundred feet from the house, so the next day a new crew came to the farm to lay new pipe.

The day the water came back, Bart did the one thing she’d been craving for months.

“I took the longest, hottest shower. I ran all the hot water out of the tank and didn’t worry about it for a second.”