Marion Patton doesn’t go for bottled water like many people these days.
Nope. Patton travels from his home in the Miller section of Gary to Black Oak, south of the Borman Expressway and fairly close to Griffith, to find natural, unfiltered water straight from the ground.
“The old men in the neighborhood told me about it, and I think it’s helped me,” Patton said, who said he’s been drinking from the spring for at least 50 years. “It’s got a sweet taste to me. Now, when you first get it, it may have a bit of a foul odor to it, but once it settles for a day, it’s my favorite.”
Indiana has 15 artesian wells, according to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, most of which are located in the central part of the state. Gary has this one, and Northwest Indiana’s only artesian well got a long-needed cleanup Wednesday.
Six Lake County Sheriff’s Department trusties waded through and tossed enough garbage and other debris to fill a long Dumpster from around the Chase Street Flowing Well at the corner of 37th Avenue and Chase Street. Residents in the city’s Black Oak area have long used the rare well for its water, which bubbles up naturally from an aquifer.
They’ve also used it as a prime dumping area since a one-mile stretch of Chase Street was closed in 2009 because it’s in such poor shape, according to Lake County Commissioner Roosevelt Allen, who helped Little Calumet River Basin Commissioner David Castellanos arrange the cleanup.
More Top Picks Best Budget Leather Boots
Castellanos said several people came to him about remediating the area so they could get to the spring water, so he enlisted Allen’s help.
“I didn’t even know it was out there,” Castellanos said. “It’s not part of the river basin, but still, a lot of people get water from there, so I took it upon myself to get it cleaned up because people talked about the minerals from the water as being medicinal or that they couldn’t afford to get bottled water.
“I’ve seen men out there fill up the back of their pickup truck with gallon jugs of water from there, and one time, I saw an older couple out there getting water,” he said. “The man carried it up the road back to the car while the woman waited in the car.”
Castellanos, with the help of Allen, got in touch with Sheriff John Buncich, who then assigned trusties from his department’s Community Workforce, program coordinator Laura Lunkes said. The work took about an hour, and it certainly wasn’t pleasant, she said.
“Let’s just call it garbage and debris,” Lunkes said.
Additional help came from the City of Gary, which provided equipment, and the Lake County Sanitary District, which provided the Dumpster. Lunkes said she’ll likely be bringing another group out in the spring for further cleanup efforts.
People have been going to the spring for as long as Allen can remember.
“It’s been there at least 60, 70 years, and people from Black Oak would bring jugs and gallon containers for this water,” Allen said. “The Gary Health Department would go out there and test it from time to time to make sure it was OK to drink. But then when Chase Street was closed, certain people used it as a dumping ground.
“We want to make it safer for people to get to the water.”
But even Patton, who loves it, said it’s not for everyone, starting with his wife.
“My wife’s gotten used to bottled water, so it’s not her favorite,” Patton said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter with the Post-Tribune.