Dirty Water

Some 21 years ago, I hired a well driller to punch a well for my cabin. Given the location in a narrow mountain valley, only a stone’s throw from a creek that runs full all year long, I was not surprised to hit water immediately. I took samples of the water to a testing lab, which resulted in the good news that the water was potable and did not need any softening due to heavy mineral loads.

That said, I do have one problem to deal with: glacial silt, sometimes called rock flour. It’s the same stuff that turns some high mountain waters a lovely turquoise, originating from glaciers grinding rocks to bits during the last ice age. In my case, the silt causes my well water to turn a light chocolate brown for several minutes when I first fire up my pump each season. This has always been the case. The first time I ran the pump 21 years ago, it ran chocolate for almost 6 hours before clearing up.

“You’ll likely always fight the silt,” my well-driller informed me. The glacial silt has eased up greatly but did increase again for a spell following a 5.8 earthquake with an epicenter less than 10 miles from my cabin in June of 2017.

Each year now, I run my water into a bucket at the wellhead before I turn it loose in the cabin. Additionally, I have a filter that fully clears the water before it enters the cabin plumbing system. I am posting an image of my cabin’s water when I first started pumping the other day. Following is an image taken a bit less than an hour later.

Cloudy Cabin Water

Clear Water After Pumping for an Hour

—Mitchell Hegman