Clovis, Calif., Man Finds Water for Thirsty Clients

Aug. 24–In rolling hills browned by the searing sun, the search for water unfolds as a buck deer dashes from a thicket and runs from view.

About to ply his trade of locating where best to drill a well, Jay Shaw of Clovis marvels at the size of the animal and its rack of antlers.

“You don’t see that everyday,” he says.

Shaw is at work in an area north of Auberry Road near Copper Avenue, where it’s far easier to find jackrabbits, rattlesnakes and the occasional deer than water.

That’s why he’s there, hired for about $1,000 to use special technology to do something witchers and dowsers have done for centuries with forked sticks and metal rods — with mixed success.

Shaw’s is a family business, triggered three years ago by his own frustration with dowsers that he said found only dry wells on his property, costing him thousands of dollars.

But some of the people who hire him — including his client for the job in the hills off Auberry Road — still sometimes hedge their bets by bringing in a dowser as well as turning to Shaw’s National Water Surveying.

“We’re in the 21st century, but if you’re comfortable with that [hiring dowsers], that’s fine,” Shaw says. He prefers equipment that he has used to help 300 clients in 14 California counties as a franchisee of National Water Surveying near Olympia, Wash.

Two of Shaw’s sons help him.

Robbie Shaw operates a computer to record data created by equipment that sends sound waves into the ground. Jay Shaw helps put four meter-long stakes into the ground and string electrodes. Later, Tyler Shaw removes the stakes and electrodes.

At their home office, wife Bonnie Shaw handles marketing and bookkeeping.

The technology, used to detect the presence — or absence — of water and the expected gallon-per-minute delivery rate, had its beginnings with a company in England that sought oil.

Jay Shaw uses what is termed a “buffalo source” to fire a high-powered 12-gauge shotgun black powder blank about 1,500 feet into the soil to create sound pressure waves.

“It’s called a buffalo because of how hard it hits,” he says, just before the blank sends some dust flying around his feet.

It will be a few days before Dave Miller, who hired the Shaws for the job along with another property owner, knows what the soundings — made at four separate locations — will reveal.

But, like Jay Shaw, he also has spent thousands of dollars to no avail after hiring witchers, and he’s hoping the $1,000 he pays for the exploratory effort will save him from repeating his futile tries that included one dry well that was 600 feet deep.

The computer data will be analyzed by a geologist with the parent company’s corporate office in Washington, as well as a geologist in Colorado.

Jay Shaw says about 10 percent to 15 percent of the time the tests find no water. But that information is important, too, he says, considering that drilling a well can cost $20 to $40 a foot, and a test well is almost as expensive.

“We’re not hired to tell people what they want to hear, but what they need to hear,” says Ervin Kraemer, a former Washington state trooper who started the franchise in 2001 after drilling a dry well on his property. He has 29 franchise operators, including one in Canada. The others are in a dozen states.

One of the Shaws’ first satisfied customers was Jerry Sullivan of Clovis, who had three wells on his property that were either dry or producing poorly.

“They came out and put the sounding equipment down and whacked it with a big hammer, like the bell at the county fair,” Sullivan says. “They gave me four locations, and I picked one. Their figures were conservative at 15 to 18 gallons a minute. I ended up with 50 gallons.”

Linita Ellis of Tollhouse says she hired the Shaws, along with witcher Eunice Weldon of Burrough Valley, to find water on what she calls “a mountain notorious for having bad wells.”

Weldon, 72, says she took up witching as a pastime when she was about 4 years old and living on a farm in Kingsburg.

Both her parents and her father-in-law also had the gift, she says, adding that she has found hundreds of wells, “if not more,” in California and Nevada. She names four others who practice what she said is a “mystical” art.

Larry Naffziger, owner of Clovis Well Drilling, says the Shaws have “an excellent service, an exceptional record” and are more accurate than dowsers or water witchers.

But Naffziger does not write off the ages-old way of finding water.

“Two or three years ago, there was about a 90 percent success rate with dowsers, but that’s not been so good lately,” he says. “I don’t know what changed.”

Naffziger uses a technique he calls “hydro-fracturing” to draw water into wells that may appear dry. At a cost of about $10 a foot, he explains, he inserts a rubberized tubing into a well, inflates it and injects water.

“It’s like angioplasty of hard rock,” he says. The pressurized water can cause rock to split, bringing more water into the well. He said the technique was developed in the eastern United States.

John Aguilar, owner of Johnny’s Drilling and Pump Service in Frazier Park in Kern County, says his company has had a 100 percent success rate with National Water Surveying, drilling about 20 wells.

Aguilar says, “I always tell people I will not pick the spot [for drilling].”

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