NORDLAND — The plight of Kelly and Gloria Hays is fact stranger than fiction.
Yet, it is a plight that is becoming commonplace on the scenic rural island of Marrowstone.
Dream homes built with saltwater-fouled groundwater, or wells going dry altogether.
In Hays’ case, the irony is even more pronounced.
As one of three commissioners with the public agency that provides water service to east Jefferson County, Hays routinely hauls water to his 3,400-square-foot, two-story, Victorian-style dream home.
The home overlooks the bluff off East Marrowstone Road and has spectacular Puget Sound water views.
The Jefferson County Public Utility District commissioner’s well, with chloride levels unfit for consumption, is useless.
Hays, a retired Qwest executive, used a reverse osmosis system to purify the water, but found it too costly and noisy. The system filtered saltwater from the well in his front yard for 11 years.
“So when the opportunity to haul water came up, I shut the reverse osmosis system off,” Hays says inside the retirement home he has shared with his wife, Gloria, since 1992.
Fills 300-gallon tank
Today, Hays fills a 300-gallon plastic tank four to five times a week in his old commercial-model Ford van at a Public Utility District hydrant.
The hydrant is about 300 feet from the district’s Chimacum Road headquarters in Port Hadlock and is primarily used by Marrowstone customers.
Residents estimate that Marrowstone customers are hauling at least 50,000 gallons a week from the utility district water station.
Hays says he hauls between 1,200 to 1,500 gallons a week to his home, and then makes additional deliveries to four other homeowners also without potable water.
District officials said the agency is charging water-hauling customers $3 per 1,000 gallons, with a base charge of $20 a month.
Water system planned
To many on Marrowstone, not having access to a public water line isn’t right.
That’s why they successfully enlisted the utility district to plan and ultimately construct a water system to the island.
Water system proponents, such as longtime Marrowstone retirees Scott Cassill and Ralph Rush, last year won a Superior Court legal battle against environmental concerns and a minority of residents who fear a water system will encourage development.
With more wells fouled by saltwater creeping into aquifers, Marrowstone Island landowners are still paying big bucks to build dream homes with water catchment systems the state views as illegal.
Residents are also drilling new wells that are good for now, or resorting to expensive reverse osmosis systems.
That’s why Cassill believes there’s no stopping those who have long owned pieces of Marrowstone from building retirement homes.
Cassill and others think that existing Jefferson County zoning laws will protect the island from too much density.