WARDEN - Warden plans to ask residents to limit lawn watering during April as they work to restart a well.

Well 6 hasn't been operating during the winter as city staff tried to determine whether it could meet Department of Ecology requirements. Mayor Tony Massa explained the well draws water from two aquifers and the state doesn't want the water mixing.

The issue started when state Department of Health inspectors discovered ethylene dibromide (EDB) was discovered in Well 5, Massa said. The fumigant is believed to have contaminated the higher aquifer of the well.

"We got funding to drill a new well," Massa said. "Part of that process was that we had to allow the Department of Ecology to find out where that pesticide had come from, and the other part of the process was that we had to start rehabilitating our wells."

As part of the rehabilitation process, the city needed to close the wells it wasn't using, and make sure the operational wells were only drawing water from one aquifer, he said. Well 6 draws water from the Wanapum and Grande Ronde aquifers.

"One of the things that Ecology wanted was that well cased, so it only drew water from the Grande Ronde," Massa said.

Well 6 can't be cased because it is crooked, he said. Since it is one of the two wells in operation, the city has been searching for a solution.

"Ecology was not going to let us put the pump back in, so we talked to them and said, 'Listen, if you let us put the pump back in, we'll try to pursue another well,'" Massa said.

As part of trying to find a solution which did not involve closing Well 6, city officials tried to see whether it was possible to draw enough water from the Wanapum aquifer to supply the city during the summer, Massa said.

City Clerk Kris Shuler said the city uses about 2,200 gallons per minute during the summer when people are watering their lawns.

When the city was closing a nearby well, officials discovered the water level in Well 6 was increasing, Massa said.

"We thought maybe we can just leave the plug in (the nearby well) and get enough water off of the Wanapum, and that's what we had been trying to do over the last couple of weeks, but that's not the case, we can't get enough off of the Wanapum."

While the city was testing the well, it removed the pump, and is in the process of putting it back in before summer, Shuler said. The well is expected to be operational by the end of April.

"If we have warm weather, that's when we may have a problem keeping up," she said.

Councilmembers decided to ask city residents to conserve water voluntarily during April, until they can put the pump back into Well 6.

Massa suggested asking people living in even-numbered addresses to water their lawns on even-numbered days and people living on odd-numbered addresses to water their lawns on odd-numbered days.

The city plans to start looking for funding to build a new well to replace Well 6, Shuler said. Gray and Osborne engineers are helping the city with finding possible grants for the well.