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A Silent Menace . . . July 29, 2019

May contain: architecture, building, outdoors, shelter, bunker, and hole
CRUMBLING PARTICLE BOARD COVERS THIS OPEN ABANDONED WELL. THE DEPTH-TO-WATER WAS MEASURED AT 100 FEET AT THE TIME THE WELL WAS DISCOVERED. (HPWD FILE PHOTO)

Have you ever thought of the terror that would grip the heart of a little child who is trapped at the bottom of an old well?

 Have you ever thought how small a spot of daylight would be if you were looking up one hundred feet through sixteen-inch casing? How small the possibilities of recovery?

 We are finding many holes with as much as forty inches of open space at the top.

 We have been told many times .... ''Yes, I closed my old well. I have two 1 x 4's over it with a brick laid on top” or this is a common excuse, "Aw! No one will ever fall into THAT well, they all know it is there.”

 The little child who lost her life a few years ago in California (Kathy Fiscus - 1949) did not know an old well was hidden in the weeds and grass where she was playing. As surely as day follows night, that will be the price that someday will have to be paid here in the High Plains of Texas before the average citizen will take the time to fill an old well. Maybe that life will be your child or someone in your community who is dear to you. What a terrible price to pay to press the necessity of doing a job that common decency has made us all feel should have been done long ago--the job of filling an old well.

 It is the opinion of this District that every man who is responsible for an open well should be fined the maximum amount of the law which is $500.00 and be made to fill that old well before the day ends.

 For we believe that:  A LITTLE LIFE IS WORTH MORE THAN A LITTLE TIME!

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