RIO GRANDE – Some residents of Shunpike Road between Oslo and Davis roads in Middle Township are not particularly pleased with the Wildwood Water Utility’s plans to drill wells and build a treatment plant on a vacant site in their neighborhood.
“This project is the preliminary phase of locating a new City of Wildwood water pumping and filtration treatment plant from its present location near Menz’s Restaurant to our neighborhood,” Eric Gundrum, an engineer who lives in the area, said in a letter addressed to his neighbors.
Gundrum said the plant would eventually supply the water needs of all the Wildwoods and parts of Middle and Lower townships. He said that the state Department of Environmental Protection ordered Wildwood Water to look for a new location for its wells due to saltwater intrusion in the existing well field. He said that, as of the Sept. 27 letter, the DEP had not approved the feasibility of the site.
The engineer said the proposed water treatment plant goes against Middle Township zoning and that the new well – less than a mile from the current well site – will eventually become salty.
Gundrum said a 2005 report by the N.J. Geological Survey said Cape May County is running out of potable water. He said the report is one of the reasons why the DEP wanted Wildwood to look for other well sites along the spine of the county, which he said is in the area of the Garden State Parkway and Route 9.
Project manager Mike Chapman said the project started in early 2017. Chapman, the former director of the Lower Township Municipal Utilities Authority, has been on the project for about a month. He said the Wildwood Water Utility is regulated by the DEP’s Bureau of Water Allocation and Permitting.
“A major consideration regarding all decisions is the impact the pumping (diversion) activities will have on saltwater intrusion into the confined aquifer,” Chapman said in a report he provided to the Herald.
He said he was hired to help the water department on capital projects and has been consulting on the well relocation project. He said the property was purchased by Wildwood several years ago, and some test wells were drilled for eventual production wells.
In 2017, Wildwood approached the property owners to discuss the purchase of the property, at 3117 Shunpike Road. The purchase of the property was contingent on drilling test wells, evaluating the water quantity and quality and obtaining a major modification to the Wildwood Water Allocation Permit. Four wells were drilled while the property still belonged to the private owner.
The wells proved to be satisfactory, and the water utility purchased the property on Aug. 25, 2023, after which additional wells were drilled at depths of 150 feet, 350 feet and 700 feet. Chapman said one of the wells will be 1,000 feet deep.
He addressed what he believes is one of Gundrum’s concerns, that the new wells will cause his well to become salty. “These wells are much deeper. They are in confined aquifers that are not where his well water comes from. There is no influence there,” he said.
Chapman said some private wells could be only 20 to 30 feet deep, although some wells in Lower Township were as deep as 100 to 200 feet.
“It’s not an uncomplicated subject,” he said.
According to his report, the water utility plans to mix water from several aquifers because it reduces the need to chemically treat it, which then reduces the cost for drinking water. At a pre-application meeting on Oct. 17 with the DEP two additional wells were discussed: one into the Cohansey and one into the Lower Kirkwood confined aquifers.
Chapman said what probably triggered some of the neighbors’ concerns were a 24-hour well test required by the DEP. He said when an entity drills a well the DEP will normally require it to pump at capacity for 24 hours and see if it has an effect on observation wells located on the site. Once approved by the DEP the test wells can be converted to production wells.
Chapman said there would be four wells on the Shunpike Road site, which would be housed in a ranch-style building. He said the site would not resemble a public works-style operation. The area would be fenced, and utility employees would visit the site once or twice each day to check on the equipment and to take water samples for testing.
“It will be less intrusive on the neighborhood than an Airbnb house,” he said.
Chapman said the DEP essentially tells municipalities where it wants them to drill wells. Given that Cape May County is a peninsula, the DEP wants wells placed on the center of the land mass, or spine, where the most favorable geological areas are. Chapman said that nearly a quarter-century ago there was a huge concern about saltwater intrusion.
“The first report expected the sky to fall,” he said. “Some assumptions were not correct.”
He said the recent view is that the experts don’t expect anything to change regarding saltwater intrusion for the next 20 to 25 years.
Contact the reporter, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 128.
