FAITH — The Faith Board of Aldermen received an answer from the North Carolina Division of Environmental Quality on whether the town will still need to perform testing on the new well. The question of whether or not previous pump testing was sufficient was answered by the NCDEQ with a no, meaning the town will now have to perform more testing in order to get the new well fully up and running.

According to a discussion brought before the board, the town’s contracted engineer is recommending that the tests wait until late in the fall or the winter so that the town’s water usage is lower. According to communication with the engineer, the testing could take up to 48 hours to complete, and the storage of water that the town would rely on during that would not be able to last two days in the summer or early fall if the usage is above average. However, the storage should last almost three days on average in colder weather.

The discussion about the testing that happened during the board’s meeting on Tuesday night was whether or not shutting down three of the town’s wells for testing was feasible at any point in the year. Board member Jayne Lingle stated that in order for the reduced pumping to work, the town would have to ask its residents to cut their water usage down to only the necessities.

“We really don’t have a choice, y’all, I mean we’ve got to do it somehow if we want that well put up,” said Mayor Randall Barger.

At the end of the discussion, the board voted unanimously to start the bidding process for the well testing. This gives the board at least a month while the bidding process plays out to continue to discuss how they want to handle the water supply on the day of the tests.