Wickham system to get new well

WARWICK-The Wickham Water district will soon have another well online, good news for the district that just five years ago suffered through well contaminations and closures. The new well, dubbed well number 10, was given by Ridge Homes, the development recently built across Kings Highway near Airport Road. The town was going to phase in the well over time, but the need to quicken the pace arose early in July when one of the pumps went bad. Then just a couple of weeks ago, a broken pipe put even more of a strain on the system. "That strained the other wells," said Supervisor Michael Sweeton. "We were going to add the well at our leisure, but when that happened, we decided to step it up a bit." The Orange County Department of Health is working with the town, he added, to garner the necessary approvals before the well goes online. This new well is a good producer, pumping 30-40 gallons per minute. The district, which serves 340 homes in Wickham Village, Ridge Homes and Wickham Knolls, now has three wells on line. "You don't want to run the wells 24 hours a day," Sweeton said. "That's why we accelerated the process." The Wickham Water District has had a bumpy history. Problems began almost from the beginning, when the district came into being with the building of Wickham Village. The quality and quantity of water produced was inadequate. In the summer of 1999, a sewage leak coupled with a broken chlorinator caused the district to basically shut down. E.Coli contamination forced residents to use water trucked in by tankers and three wells were permanently closed.