Water Shortage

In the valley lowlands, groundwater is not easily accessible. Most buildings in communities such as Peninsula need to obtain potable water from outside sources and store it in an outside cistern. In seasons with very little rainfall, this can be both expensive and in high demand. Throughout the 20th century to the present day, water haulers have helped valley residents overcome the shortage.

Black and white photo of Howe aqueduct. Bushy trees surround a river with a bridge structure going over the river. — Valley communities need to find outside sources of water. In 1825, Richard Howe built this aqueduct near Yellow Creek to carry water.
Courtesy/Bath Township Historical Society

Water Shortange

2011 Oral History Project: Philip Urbank, who grew up on Quick Road in Peninsula and worked as a well driller, describes the valley water shortage and the steps that residents take to provide water to their homes and businesses.

Credit / Author:

Phillip Urbank

Date created:

09/29/2021

Audio Transcript

“That was the sandstone up in the high ground, like Richfield, Bath, Copley, and it was easy to get wells. You put in maybe fifty feet of pipe, drill down a hundred feet, and you’d get into the porous sandstone and get good water. But you get down here in the valley, you drill a hole in it for a well, you usually get salt brine. And most of the buildings in the village of Peninsula, here, have cisterns and the water has to be trucked in.
“There’s one story I like to tell. A lady was widowed. She had two kids in high school. She had a dog kennel . . . her business was grooming dogs. And she was right by the uh, where Ira Road and Riverview Road there, right by the river. Her hand-dug well would go dry in the summer and if she had the water truck dump water in there, it’d be gone by morning. So she said she had some money saved up. Would I try and drill a well there? Well I told her the chances. The farm across the road that tried a couple wells and they couldn’t get anything. So I started drilling and Ed Bender up the road, he was kinda tellin’ the neighbors he was ticked off that this well driller was goin’ in there and robbin’ the widow lady’s money, tryin’ to drill a well when there wasn’t any water there, and I think it was about 150, 170 feet, I hit a nice layer of clean pea gravel and the well casing, when it was sticking about eighteen inches above the ground, the water was flowing over the top. I had gotten an artesian well, and I hadn’t hit an artesian well within miles of there in my whole fifty years of well drilling. So Mr. Bender, he kinda had to eat a crow on that one.”