Cape Coral homeowners dealing with dried-up wells

Wells are running dry and causing a headache for some Cape Coral homeowners, with one man saying he had to pay to dig his pipe an extra 40 feet deeper.

Michael Hart has lived on well water in northwest Cape Coral for 15 years. He never had a problem with his pressure going too low until two weeks ago.

“I ran out of water; we didn’t have water,” Hart said.

Typically, water pressure issues happen during the dry season between December and mid-May. After speaking to his neighbors, Hart found out his well wasn’t the only one to run dry; four other people nearby had the same problem. Hoping for help, he called a technician who said his 120-foot well needed to go deeper because it was pumping too much air.

“He said, ‘We need to lower the pump down further; we’ll put you down to, like, about 160 feet,'” Hart said.

The job cost Hart almost $2,000, a bill he never expected and certainly didn’t budget for. But, looking around in his neighborhood, Arielle Pisano from Water Medic of Cape Coral says Hart should’ve seen it coming thanks to all the new home construction.

“Every well that’s drilled is like having a straw in a bowl,” Pisano said.

And as more people move to Cape Coral, the water in that bowl disappears much faster. The only solution is for people to come together to minimize wasteful water usage.

“Cape Coral right now is down to irrigating one day a week, so I think following your scheduled timeframe is going to help,” Pisano said.