One member of the group told the Aberdeen Board of Commissioners Monday night that wells in the neighborhood began drying up after the town drilled a new well nearby.
“But we haven’t pumped any water from our well yet,” Town Manager Tony Robertson said.
Aberdeen Planning Director Giles Hopkins told the group, “All shallow water tables in the county have dropped, with the dry conditions of the last few years. I’m afraid you may have to drill deeper wells.”
The residents were not convinced that Aberdeen’s new well is not to blame. One retorted, “I’ve been there since 1957, and I never had any problem with my well until now — and there have been dry spells before.”
He added, “People say that a new well won’t bring water from another well, but it will.”
Mayor Betsy Mofield assured the residents that the town would look into the situation and provide whatever help it could.
And Robertson said, “When we run a water line from that well up 211 to connect to our present system, we will be glad to allow the people in that area to tap onto our line. But that could be six months away.”
“It looks like it’ll be four months at best,” Commissioner Art Parker said.
“Four months of hauling water? That’s crazy,” one of the residents said.
In other business, the commissioners unanimously approved a text amendment to the Aberdeen Zoning Code, adding a new R-16 residential district with a minimum house size of 1,600 square feet.
No one spoke during a public hearing on the proposal earlier in the meeting.
Hopkins explained that the square footage requirement in the new R-16 zone is halfway between the 1,800-square-foot minimum in R-20A zones and the 1,400-square-foot minimum in R-20 zones. He said he plans to propose a major rewrite of the Zoning Code in July that would change the numbers in the residential zoning designations, so as to make the gradations in square footage requirements easier to understand.
The commissioners then voted to rezone all parcels of property currently zoned R-20A on Magnolia Drive to R-16. The action was an amendment to a request from a developer to rezone certain of the R-20A lots to R-20.
Curtis Hill of the Berkley neighborhood asked about the status of the town’s application for a Community Development Block Grant to provide sewer service to the parts of Berkley that do not have it. Robertson said the CDBG awards had not been announced but that he expected an announcement this week.
All members of the board were present for the 35-minute meeting.
