When the small town of Hillsboro’s well went dry in the fall, requiring a $12,000 bailout, it was just the latest water struggle for the 100-person village with roots stretching to the 1700s.
For as long as people have lived in the Loudoun County community about 10 miles northwest of Leesburg, its residents had depended on its underground spring to quench their thirst.
“That spring has served our community forever. It’s an extremely reliable system that’s part of our town,” Mayor Roger Vance said.
But because spring water often poses a risk for bacterialcontamination, the federal government established a plan in the 1990s to reduce its use, and Hillsboro was forced to change.
The handful of Northern Virginia communities that still relied on such systems had them replaced over the last decade, because it was too expensive to adequately filter the water, said Hugh Eggborn, an engineering field director for the Virginia Department of Health.
“They are a natural feature of the ground. They weren’t constructed to exclude bacteria,” state health spokesman Charlie Ford said.
After a series of tests, the Hillsboro spring water was found to have fecal-coloform Aug. 9, 2000, placing the town under a boil order.
And the town gave up its spring.
The well the town then turned to was “low-producing,” Eggborn said, meaning that it could dry up during lengthy drought conditions, like this year’s.
As Loudoun County begins to truck in water three times a week to prevent the system from shutting down, the town is preparing to build a second well.
Vance said his town’s concerns are a reminder of the drought’s impact.
“No water system is completely reliable during the kind of drought we’ve had,” he said.
dgenz@dcexaminer.com
