New extravagance for the rich: a well to water your lawn

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

1

The Wall Street Journal has the story, which starts with an Atlanta example, then mentions a dude in Asheville:

Lawns are parched and brown across much of the Southeast, roasted by a 28-month-long drought and new policies restricting most watering to nighttime hours. But in Atlanta’s tony Buckhead neighborhood, sprinklers were spurting energetically on a recent day across the verdant blanket of fescue grass in front of the home of James B. Williams, former chairman and chief executive of SunTrust Banks Inc. and a Coca-Cola Co. director.

A faux rock hides the well in front of Sarah Courts’s home in Atlanta.
Hidden behind nearby shrubbery on the four-acre estate is Mr. Williams’s new toy — a 400-foot-deep well. “Sprinkler System Not on City Water,” declares a small white sign pitched at the entrance to Mr. Williams’s driveway. Mr. Williams’s landscaper placed the sign there to thwart neighborhood vigilantes from ratting him out to water authorities.

…

But neighbors elsewhere are irked by the displays of such extravagance. Jason Cooper, who lives in Asheville, N.C. and whose lawn is currently the color of straw, is frustrated by rich people pampering their grass. “The fact that people would circumvent water restrictions in order to keep their lawns green amazes me,” Mr. Cooper says. “But I realize that around the world, the people with the most money tend to hoard scarce resources.”

Many of the well owners say they are just using what belongs to them. In Georgia and North Carolina, groundwater is considered a regulated riparian system, meaning if you own the land, you own the water underneath it. Many eastern states have similar laws, as opposed to states out west that have what’s called prior appropriation, which means an agency owns the water instead.

Despite the I-own-what’s-under-my-house laws, too much pumping can lower the amount of groundwater if there are a lot of wells in one area that yield a significant amount of water, says Jim Kennedy, Georgia’s state geologist. In Atlanta, Dr. Kennedy says most of the wells don’t yield more than a modest 15 gallons a minute — making them self-limiting. However in extreme cases, over-pumping can lead to land subsidence.