“I would lay down at night—it was so cold—and I could see the stars,” Sylvia says, wringing her hands. It sounds like a romantic scene out of a story replete with panoramic views of nature or the quiet wonderment at what lays beyond the stars. “When I came here—you’re not going to believe it—we didn’t have nothing up there, no roof,” Sylvia says as she looks up at the ceiling and points to the walls separating the living room from the bedroom.
In 2020, Sylvia lost her job of 36 years due to the COVID-19 Pandemic and the subsequent employee layoffs that plagued that first year of the pandemic. This forced Sylvia and her family to relocate outside San Antonio just past Loop 1604 to their house that wasn’t quite ready to be called “home.” The house still lacked a roof, walls, and other necessary parts of the structure that make it safe to inhabit. So, now living in an area frequented by tornados and large hornets and mosquitos, Sylvia and her family hurried to finish building their house. “All our material was stacked to the side because one day we were gonna get to it. Well, that day came, and we had to get to it,” Sylvia says, recalling the months her family spent constructing the rest of their house.
However, by 2022, Sylvia’s husband, Robert, became gravely ill. While her husband recovered in the hospital for six months from an infection that nearly took his life, Sylvia was shocked to hear that, now, the water at home wasn’t working. “I couldn’t bring him home. I didn’t have any water,” Sylvia says, remembering the desperation she felt at her inability to bring Robert home.
It turned out that the water well on her family’s property was no longer pumping water to their home. Like a number of other shallow wells in the area, Sylvia’s well dried up after the especially hot summer in 2022. Without water, Sylvia had to rely on generous community members who supplied her with water for drinking, cooking, and bathing. But Sylvia knew this couldn’t be the long-term solution if she wanted to bring Robert home and live there with him safely and healthily.
In November 2022, with the help of a case worker assigned to assist Sylvia with finding a service that could fix her well, Sylvia heard about Merced’s Owner-Occupied Repair Program and reached out in hopes of finally hearing some good news. “We tried it and bingo,” Sylvia says as her voice falters just a touch. “I called and in matter of days Jaime was here,” Sylvia says with a smile on her face.
“This is actually the second well we work on,” says Jaime, the Merced Construction Project Manager assigned to oversee progress on Sylvia’s well.
Jaime recognizes that Sylvia and her family have been struggling with the lack of water for some time. “For the past year or so she has not had water,” Jaime says. But, since starting the process last November, both Jaime and Sylvia can now see relief in sight. “So far, it’s been going well,” Jaime says.
When Sylvia got word that Merced would be moving forward with building her family a new well, she was happy to share the news with the generous people that had been helping her receive water over the past year. “I told him ‘We’re gonna get our water!’ and he says, ‘But you better not be strangers’ and I said we’re not,” Sylvia says with a sniffle.
The project to build Sylvia and her family a new well included jetting and capping the existing water well—a process that involves ensuring a well is dry and free of debris before filling it with a cement mixture to prevent unauthorized access and contamination of the well and the connecting aquifer. Following that, a new hole was drilled for new water well service, along with a new well pump, pressure tank, wire, fittings, floats and all necessary materials to complete the installation. Next, a new electrical service was installed from the electric meter to the well, plus a new service box at the well site. Finally, a new water line from the was connected to the house, bringing peace of mind, along with fresh water, to Sylvia and her family.
