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Water questions
remain at Lakes
By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Charles Shepherd, the Health Department’s sanitarian manager for the five counties in the RappahannockRapidan Planning District, has put a hold on permits for septic fields in Rappahannock Lakes, awaiting word from his superiors on the legal ramifications ensuing from private wells in the small-lot subdivision which was initially intended to be served by a public water system.
The subdivision of 70-odd lots ranging from a quarter to a half-acre in size was recorded in the late 1950s before Rappahannock County enacted zoning and subdivision ordinances. Meant as a vacation development with only parttime residents, Rappahannock Lakes has become a yearround community, and as such, it has been continually plagued by water problems, both of quality and quantity.
Those problems came to the attention of public health agencies over a decade ago. The primary well which provided water for the subdivision flows at a rate of just three gallons a minute, not nearly enough for the 27 households hooked on by the late 1970s. Taps frequently went dry, so to provide adequate quantity, a spring was patched into the system.
But in 1978, sampling showed fecal coliform in the water, leading to an order from the Health Department’s Office of Water Programs to disconnect the suspect spring (which was located down-grade from a septic drainfield). A new well was dug; however, it added only 1-1/2 gallons of water per minute to the system’s supply, so the quantity problem continued, and by 1979, enough households had either put in wells of their own or hooked onto a private well belonging to nearby landowner Stanley Dye that the system apparently no longer had 15 connections or 25 users for at least six months of the year, the standard for qualifying as a public water supply.
See WATER, p. 13
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