Drilling continues on Baker City’s new drinking-water well, but progress has been slower than expected since the $677,000 project started in early October.

“It’s definitely going slower than I had anticipated,” said Michelle Owen, the city’s public works director. “Part of that is just due to the types of soil that they ran into is a little bit different than the well log that they have for the old golf course well.”

Equipment breakdowns have also contributed to the rate of drilling, Owen said.

The City Council voted in April 2020 to hire Schneider Water Services of St. Paul, near Salem, to drill the well, which is on the east side of the parking lot at the city’s Quail Ridge Golf Course, 2801 Indiana Ave.

The company estimates the well will need to be drilled to a depth of about 700 feet, Owen said.

So far the well, which will have a casing 12 inches in diameter, has been sunk about 197 feet.

Owen said the drill has so far been encountering clay soils and has yet to reach layers of rock that contain the aquifer that will be tapped.

The drillers expect to reach rock soon, she said.

“That would be good,” Owen said.

She said it’s not uncommon for well-drillers to find surprises underground.

The predictions were based on the log made by the company that drilled a nearby well that supplies water to the golf course.

Schneider Water Services has until May 1 to finish drilling the well.

The next phase, which includes installing a pump and distribution pipes, and building a structure around the well, will be more expensive, costing an estimated $2 million, Owen said.

That work won’t start until the new fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2021.

Owen said the new well, which will supplement the city’s main water source — a dozen streams and springs in the 10,000-acre watershed on the east slopes of the Elkhorn Mountains about 10 miles west of town — likely will be available to deliver water to homes and businesses starting in the spring of 2022.

“When complete, we hope that it will produce about 1,500 gallons a minute,” Owen said.

That’s about 2.16 million gallons per day.

This past summer, the city’s daily water demand averaged more than 4 million gallons during August.

The city definitely would have relied on the new well this summer had it been finished, Owen said.

The city likely will tap the new well both during the summer, when demand peaks and the supply from the watershed diminishes, and in some years during the spring, when rapidly melting snow in the mountains can temporarily cause streams to carry too much silt for the water to be safely used.

The new well is one of the major projects that prompted the City Council to boost water rates by 10% in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Those increases will pay for the well and for the continuation of a long-term effort to replace the century-old, leaky concrete pipeline that brings water to town from the city’s watershed.

The new well will be the city’s second.

The other well, which the city drilled in 1977 near its water treatment plant and reservoir on the hill near Reservoir Road, is about 800 feet deep.

Owen said the new well, like the existing one, will be part of the city’s Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) system.

Baker City was the first Oregon city to receive a state permit allowing it to divert water from surface sources — the watershed streams and springs — into a well during the winter when the watershed produces far more water than the city needs.

That water is stored in the well aquifer and can be pumped later into the city’s distribution system.