Family of 4 in Parker receives donated water well
PARKER TWP — No drop of water goes to waste in the Dittman household.
A leaky holding tank, coupled with an exceptionally dry year, have made the Dittmans’ only source of water unreliable.
For 14 years, Amanda Dittman, a homemaker, and her husband Samuel, a laborer, have made do with a cistern that stands above-ground, partially covered by greenery and tall grasses near their home.
Before that, Amanda Dittman and her mother, and the generations before them also relied on the spring.
The farmhouse has been in Amanda Dittman’s family since 1903 and has never had a well. Now, the spring’s depleting water levels disrupt the Dittmans’ daily lives.
Without municipal water or a well, Amanda and Samuel Dittman have had to be creative with their water supply between working, juggling household tasks and raising two children.
Amanda Dittman, who home-schools Kaya, 9, and Colt, 10, has a strategy in place each time she cooks, cleans, launders and washes dishes. She’s had to plan her days well in advance, prioritizing which chores she can do based on the availability of water.
The couple has resorted to saving water in whatever ways they can, from keeping showers to two minutes — and turning off the tap when lathering up — to using water from their dehumidifier and filtered rainwater to do laundry, flushing toilets with water from laundry and keeping bleached dishwater in the sink to wash dishes.
“It’s put a burden on us for a while for sure,” Amanda Dittman said. “Anxiety-wise, especially, with being a homemaker.”
Amanda Dittman would often launder clothes in metal tubs outside by hand using a washboard; Samuel would haul water in a 225-gallon tank.
For cooking, the couple would buy bottled water, she said. With one car, and a leaking tank, the Dittmans have partly relied on neighbors and friends to haul water for them about every two days.
“It’s constant checking the water every day just to see if the spring is still running,” Samuel Dittman said. “And if it gets too dry, the spring stops running, so then we got to go into water conservation mode.”
Samuel Dittman said he and his wife knew a well was the answer to their problems, but installing one was too costly.
“Post-pandemic, things haven’t really gotten any cheaper, either,” Amanda Dittman said. “It’s been harder and harder to make that paycheck stretch, just for even food. You do what you got to do. I said to (Samuel), you grow where you’re planted. You just figure it out, no complaints.”
Xylem, a global water technology provider, along with Water Well Trust, the Chris Long Foundation and local businesses and contractors donated and installed a water well outside the Dittman home in late September. The project would have cost the family about $7,000, contractors said.
Final touches to the philanthropic project were made Thursday, Oct. 5.
Drilling the well took about a week, said Ed King, executive director of Aquaflow, the company that donated the well pump and tank.
With water flowing from the well, the Dittmans will be able to do what they haven’t done in 14 years. They will be able to take 10-minute showers, or bathe as long as they would like, do laundry and tend to their garden without calculating how much water has been used.
Kaya and Colt will be able to fill up their kiddie pools past 2 inches, play with water balloons and take bubble baths.
“That’s been the most difficult part — just denying (the children) simple things people take for granted and don’t think about,” Samuel Dittman said.
One of the groups most affected by water shortages in the United States are rural communities, where municipal water isn't available and well installation can be pricey, said George Trojanak, business development manager with Goulds Water Technology.
Amanda Dittman said her neighbors don’t have municipal water, and the area probably never will, she said.
Without municipal water, rural families must be self-reliant. The solution for many has been to drill a well, but in areas without public water lines, single-income families like the Dittmans who can’t afford installing a well, don’t have a well-fed spring and don’t meet low-income requirements for a loan are stranded.
The income requirements for a United States Department of Agriculture well water loan is based on a median non-metropolitan household income that varies by state. To be considered eligible for a USDA loan in Pennsylvania, a family’s gross income can’t exceed $43,000, Amanda Dittman said. Her family falls just $8,000 above the limit.
The family initially applied for funding through the Water Well Trust in June, said Water Well Trust executive director Margaret Martens, and did not meet the income guidelines set by the USDA’s Rural Decentralized Water Systems Grant Program.
Martens explained that the trust partnered with other organizations, including the Chris Long Foundation, to make the well possible.
Lack of access to running water is a problem across rural communities and tribes in the United States, Martens said. The national nonprofit has drilled over 530 wells so far and receives about 16 requests a day, she said.
In some cases, Martens’ water companies decide putting up public water lines in rural areas would be cost prohibitive after people buy property.
“Running public water lines is very expensive, especially in rural areas,” she said. “It doesn’t make financial sense.”
If you can’t afford drilling your own well, and you don’t have access to municipal water, you’re “stuck,” Martens said.
“It is a lot more common issue than people know,” Martens said. “Over 2 million people are without water and that’s an undercount.”
Amanda Dittman said it will take some time to get used to the plentiful water that came in Thursday afternoon.
“With 15 years of doing this, I’m scared to not have water,” she said.
