Aquifer Carrying Capacity & Hugo Neighborhood

The shape and slope of the water table is estimated by measuring static water levels in wells. Static water levels are the levels of water in your wells under non-pumping conditions. The water level (elevation level) is the ground elevation at your well minus the distance between the ground surface and the static water in your well.

The Hugo Neighborhood has serious concerns about the availability of ground water for development due to the unknown carrying capacity of the region to supply water and the unknown effects of development. It believes there is potential for significant cumulative adverse impacts to existing water users and land owners.

Hugo neighbors can help by participating in the Oregon Water Resources Department’s (OWRD) informal volunteer well monitoring program. The process for Hugo will be in two phases: 1. a scoping or interest identification phase, and 2. a monitoring phase. In the first phase the Hugo Neighborhood would contact folks in the community, explain the issue and the opportunity, and gain permission from interested neighbors to measure water levels in their wells. Outreach will include word of mouth, a newsletter to community email list, articles and brochures published on the Hugo Neighborhood’s web site, handout brochures to selected individuals, and perhaps home meetings for information sharing.

During the monitoring phase, participating individuals would measure their well’s static water levels (no pumping) and provide the data to the OWRD. If there is enough interest, motivated individuals might coordinate the effort with OWRD and/or periodically take this information for others, and add it to the community’s public water level database.

Josephine County has become a popular place to live and in the foreseeable future there is probably no end to new neighbors in rural areas that will be dependent upon domestic wells — groundwater will be the primary source of water for all residents in this area.

Participating in this simple monitoring program would provide landowners insight into their well’s production capabilities. The neighbors’ water level data would also help establish a baseline against which future changes could be compared. This data would provide insight into the quantity of groundwater that could be developed without injury to other existing groundwater users. This type of information would be valuable to county planning needs to help guide them in implementing and monitoring development densities.

This is a volunteer program and can be discontinued by the land owner at any time.

This is a permission program and water levels will not be measured without land owner consent as to time and place volunteers are on private property. This is a public program and all water information gathered will be available to the general public.

Want more information? Contact an officer of the Hugo Neighborhood, or a member of OWRD, on how you can become involved in this volunteer well water monitoring program.