Project will fail

Dear Editor,

And Concerned Citizens:

The way the City Council and city manager propose the water site north of town, it will fail drastically in comparison to the old Army Air Base project.

A group of at least 30 farmers shared information about how far their wells are dropping off in water production. From June through August, most wells deplete at least 200 gallons or more per minute.

Over 20 years experience working with the water table proves the substantial drop.

We told the City Council that they would probably find water, but the quantity won't last if they attempt to pump the amount proposed every day. The farmers don't have a problem with the well site, if they could utilize the existing irrigation wells instead of drilling new ones -- and then only pumping the normal water usage that each farmer would irrigate during the crop irrigation season. This way, they could alternate well usage once a year, thereby allowing the water table to replenish itself just like we farmers do and not deplete one area all the time.

The farmers know from experience that if they drill six new wells all in one area and continue to run them daily all year long, the groundwater won't be able to replenish to keep up with the demand.

The City Council won't take our word for this. They would rather pay an engineer for his "opinion" on a test they pumped in February for 36 hours -- and that is what they will base their paid opinion on.

We only pump our irrigation wells for approximately 60 days and we know they drop at least 200 gallons per minute in that amount of time. Then these wells get 10 months to replenish themselves.

The City Council won't take into account over 20 years worth of data we supplied that didn't cost them a dime. The engineer won't guarantee that their paid opinion won't fail -- but we guarantee that much water depletion in such a small area will cause economical effects to our surrounding area.

Taxpayers should also insist on knowing the mineral content of said water, because it's extremely hard. Water softeners, hot water tanks, faucets, pipes, tubs, showers and toilets will all require huge maintenance costs.

All one needs to find evidence of this is drive north of McCook and look at water deposits on the existing pivots. We farmers can tell you all about that, free of charge -- but you can bet the City Council will have to hire an engineer to tell them this fact.

The landowners around the well site will suffer the most because they have spent time and money to make their irrigation systems more efficient to operate with the amount of water they have and if all the water is sucked out in two to three years, then what are we going to do?

The City Council will probably hire and engineer to tell them "yes, you're running out of water," at everybody's expense.

The city may then be held liable for all the irrigation land that they dried up. How much will that add to the cost of water in McCook? They should put in a treatment plant, treat the water they have, and quit tripping over dollar bills and picking up pennies because the farmers are getting tired of leaving them there.

Life-long farmer-rancher,

Tom McConville

Rural Frontier County