High Plains Water District and City of Wolfforth to Partner on Possible New Water Source

January 17, 2017 – The High Plains Underground Water Conservation District (HPWD) Board of Directors unanimously agreed to cost-share an exploratory well with the City of Wolfforth to investigate the Dockum and the Edwards-Trinity (High Plains) aquifers in western Lubbock County.
 
Wolfforth City Manager Darrell Newsom presented the proposal at the January 10 HPWD Board of Directors meeting. The Board agreed to allocate $90,000 to assist with the project, plus US Geological Survey logging costs.
 
The City of Wolfforth has recently concentrated their efforts to ensure citizens have a reliable source of drinking water for years to come. They have just completed a cutting edge water treatment plant to improve the quality of their water. Now they are focusing on their supply.
 
The Edwards-Trinity (High Plains) Aquifer lies beneath the Ogallala, and the City of Wolfforth hopes to obtain a well in that aquifer at a depth of about 300 feet. If adequate water is located and can be produced, this will reduce the cost of pumping Ogallala water from their well field located outside of the city limits.
 
The test hole will be drilled into the Dockum Aquifer to a depth of 1,700 feet, and logged by the U.S. Geological Survey. After logging, the test hole will be filled to the bottom of the Edwards-Trinity (High Plains) Aquifer. Depending upon the test hole results, it may be reamed and cased for use as a municipal well to supplement the City of Wolfforth’s current groundwater supply.
 
“The Edwards-Trinity Aquifer will hopefully provide us with a water source that will not compete with our own wells or the irrigation wells in the area,” Newsom said. “Our partnership with HPWD will allow us to share information with other cities in the region, and that will help all of us. HPWD’s cooperation and support will allow us to obtain much more complete data than we would be able to obtain and understand on our own.”
 
This is the District’s third partnership with a municipality to explore the Dockum Aquifer. In 2016, the cities of Abernathy and Lubbock, with assistance from the HPWD, drilled test wells into the Dockum to determine the quality and quantity of the brackish aquifer. Lubbock’s test well, located near the South Water Treatment Plant, was completed in December. 
 
“We are learning more about the Dockum Aquifer as a result of these efforts,” said HPWD General Manager Jason Coleman. “In recent years, the District has established a monitoring network in this aquifer, and these partnerships allow us to add additional data collection sites to the network.”
 
Construction of this test hole is expected to start in early 2017.