JPR News
Homes in rural areas of the Klamath Basin have lost running water as their wells fail. Part of the reason: more farmers and ranchers are pumping water from underground than any other year, because they didn’t get any irrigation water from a nearby lake.
In a small residential town called Midland outside Klamath Falls, Terry Smith stands in her driveway with her neighbor’s garden hose in hand.
That’s been her primary source of water since the well to her own home went dry several weeks earlier.
“I have no water,” Smith says, exasperated. “I can’t take a bath. I can’t clean my house. I can’t cook. And now my well is probably not going to work. I’ve lived in this house for 30 years. This is our retirement.”
Smith is waiting for emergency officials to fill her new storage tank with water, which will eventually be delivered in a tanker normally used for delivering milk. In the meantime, she’s been filling 5-gallon jugs with water at a filling station in Klamath Falls and taking up her neighbor’s offer to use water from their hose.
When Smith’s well stopped working, she called a contractor to drill it deeper. This was going to be a gamble, since there wasn’t a guarantee that it’d work, and she’d have to pay the contractor several thousand dollars regardless.
“I keep thinking today’s going to be the day that the [water] tank gets filled,” Smith says. “Today’s going to be the day when the well gets drilled. But it isn’t.”
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