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HomeMy WebLinkAboutLog129 .~ TO: Jefferson County Department of Community Development Development Review Division IV ED FROM: Dennis & Carol Burk 511 Griffith Point Road Marrowstone Island (\"",1:: t\Q~ 3 () lJua ~H\t~~~~ t~~~\i ut~ DATE: November 25, 2005 SUBJECT: Type III Land Use Application MLA05-00276 Marrowstone Island desperately needs a reliable, year-around supply of potable water and the PUD #1's proposed Marrowstone Island water system does just that. The Island's long-standing problems with water supplied by private wells are very well known if not legendary. Island. water has problems with (1) Salt Intrusion, (2) High Dis,l?olved Mineral Content, (~j Mi2robial Contamination, (4) Low Delivery Rates, (5) SeaSonal Dry Periods and (6) Complete Failure. Many parcels have had to drill deeper wells to replace shallow dried-up wells, but still ended up with marginal supplies of poor quality water. (1) Salt Intrusion nof only can be a taste problem, but more seriously it contributes to high blood pressure, a health problem that can shorten life spans. Salt water also accelerates corrosion of water heaters and all other metal plumbing components. Marrowstone residents compensate for this by buying bottled water from area grocery stores or by bottling water at mends and families who live in the Port Townsend/Port Hadlock area and enjoy a public water system. (2) High Mineral Content water can also have taste and health issues and damage plumbing components. High cost and high maintenance filtration systems can reduce troublesome mineral content, but people also haul water as an inadequate remedy. Reverse Osmosis systems can remedy salt and other mineral contamination, but it is costly, high maintenance and wasteful in that systems commonly used in homes produce more waste water than potable water. (3) Microbial Contamination is an insidious problem because people simply do not have their wells tested frequently enough. People's health can be adversely affected by contaminated water and they don't know the source is in their back yards. Whole-house mechanical filtration systems are ineffective for eliminating water borne microbes and electronic (UV) or chemical sterilization are high cost and high maintenance and are also ineffective for single family applications. It is difficult if not impossible in some cases to find the source (livestock waste or septic systems) of microbial contamination and even then it may take more than a lifetime for natural processes to clean up the ground water. LOG 'TEM # -I.L:i . Page-L-ot"Z-- ~ cc.: ~HJf, j Ii fJOloS Leslie Locke From: Sent: To: Subject: Lorna Delaney Monday, November 28, 2005 8:03 AM Leslie Locke FW: Marrowstone Water MLA05-00276 ~ Marrowstone Water MLA05-00276.. .. Lorna Delaney, Human Resource Manager Jefferson County PO Box 1220 Port Townsend, WA 98368 Ph: 360-385-9133 -----Original Message----- From: drcaburk [mailto:drcaburk@olypen.com] Sent: Friday, November 25, 2005 10:28 PM To: Lorna Delaney Subject: Marrowstone water MLA05-0027~ See attachment for comments on subject. 1 1- ;' '\ (4) Low Delivery Rates can be compensated for by adding cost and complexity to the home water system. Instead of a demand system that draws directly from the well, a "smart" well pump and a thousand gallon cistern that draws and stores water slowly around the clock can be added to buffer the high cyclic demand of a household. (5) Seasonal Dry Periods is primarily treated by hauling water from a public water system. Conservation and rain catchments are partial, but inadequate solutions at best. When the well is dry and the rain isn't falling, the bucket is dry. (6) Complete Failure of wells may suggest drilling new ones at costs greater than your share of a public system, but on Marrowstone it is a risky wager that you could even find water much less find it free of problems listed in 1 through 5 above. In reality it means hauling water, doing laundry in town, taking showers at the State Park, letting your landscaping die, forgoing a vegetable garden, eating off paper plates and reducing your standards of personal hygiene. In short your quality oflife has gone intQt);1e toilet that you don't have water to flush! In this day and age, this is unaOteptable even for so called homeless people. The time came long ago for Marrowstone to have a public water system that meets modem standards and that water system should be constructed in the public rights-of- way. In the entire world, it would be difficult to find public rights-of-way that are not used fof. utility systems of all types in addition to vehicular and pedestrian traffic. How is Jefferson County, Marrowstone Island so different from the rest ofthe world that using the public rights-of-way for public water systems is not a fore-gone conclusion? It is ludicrous to think otherwise. """~' 'C',("\~ \~\I \,', 1O.~~j , \\.,~ cc: Jefferson County Commissioners Jefferson County PUD#1 Commissioners Jefferson County PUD# 1 Director ~. \) # Pag~ LOG ITEM ( Z-'( ~. otL..