Test well in Dayton will lead to surface water storage

Water from the Carson River will soon be used to meet Dayton's growing municipal needs.

A test well that will lead to a new aquifer storage well will be drilled off of Lakes Boulevard in Dayton, so that Lyon County can store surface water for future use.

The drilling is scheduled to begin at the end of February and should be complete by the end of March, said Mike Workman, Lyon County Utilities director.

The Lyon County Board of Commissioners approved a bid of $114,550 submitted by Welsco Drilling Corp. of Fallon for drilling the test hole for the Aquifer Storage & Recovery Well no. 1 in Dayton.

"This is just a continuance in the water facilities masterplan," Workman said. "Surface water will be pumped into the well and it will supply the information to tell us where we need water-quality work."

The new well will store the surface water underground before it is pumped through infiltration wells, the first to be drilled by developer Reynan and Bardis.

"With the test well they check the various layers of soil and do geology studies, then check the water quality and quantity," Workman said. "That will determine design of the aquifer and storage well, so that we can design into the permanent well the highest efficiency, the best water quality and quantity and the longest service life that we can."

Workman said an infiltration well now being drilled will pump the surface water through part of the existing water system, then send it through the storage well. The water would be pumped in during the spring months and extracted in the summer.

"This is our first one, so the design and the approach is new to us," he said. "What we hope to do is develop a well template that we can use over and over again. Every new well that we build will have the same footprint. So this one has to be right."

Workman said the county was putting in a series of monitoring wells to indicate what the water level in the aquifer was prior to and after injection of surface water.

"It's a huge, huge project," he said. "This program is being implemented in phases. The state water engineer wants to be certain that what we're doing is not going to have a negative impact, so he's only allowing a very small portion of the water rights to be used."

Workman said the county is using 350 acre-feet of its 1,700 acre-feet water rights that have been deeded to the county by developers. The smaller amount is all the state engineer will permit until officials are certain the system works as designed.

"The infiltration well can be storing water April, May and the first part of June, when the river is not in regulation," he said. "The ASR well, when we're not injecting water, can be used as a normal projection well. We're hopeful that this system will be operating tandemly by April of 2007."

-- Contact reporter Karen Woodmansee at kwoodmansee@ nevadaappeal.com or 882-2111 ext. 351.