Gunter hosts town hall on broken water wells

GUNTER, Texas (KXII) - Gunter residents demanded answers about the city’s broken water wells at a town hall meeting hosted by the city Wednesday night at city hall.

“It seems to be a repeated issue, the one water well that is working isn’t sufficient enough to provide for the development that is already here, and how are we going to prevent this from happening again?” Gunter resident Deirdre Diamond said.

Residents have been under strict water restrictions for about a month and they want to know why is it taking so long to fix.

Gunter Mayor Mark Miller explained several reasons why.

“It takes two days to a week to pull a well and put it back,” Miller said. “We had to wait several weeks for a well driller to come up and do the one at the bridges.”

The mayor says the wells were working fine before last April’s severe thunderstorm that brought lighting.

“Before the lighting strike, they were running for three years with no problems what so ever.”

The wells are being prepared, but the water isn’t safe.

“Currently the water wells keep on failing due to the water wells keep failing due to not passing the bacteria tests,” Diamond said. “What happens when school is in session? That’s about to happen. The community should be concerned that we won’t have sufficient water while the children are at school.”

While the city hopes to get the wells up and running soon, the mayor said the city has to get away from well water and transition to surface water, but that costs money.

”The problem is we’re a long way from anybody,” Miller said. “It costs about a million dollars a mile to put in a pipeline.”

A pipeline running from Gunter to Sherman could cost an estimated $20 million.

Gunter residents worried about their water today want to feel assured that as the city grows this won’t happen again.

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