Trying to recover the lost drill stem is hard work.

High on a mountain ridge in Guatemala a gentle breeze rustles the corn stalks under a bright warm sun. There is no other sound.
Under other circumstances this would be an idyllic scene. But the silence is a symbol of quiet desperation for Niagara resident Ted Van der Zalm as he sits in a nearby clearing and stares at his crippled water drilling rig.
For the second time, a pipe has buckled hundreds of feet below the surface and attempts to press on have failed. Now he faces the prospect of abandoning a month-long effort to bring fresh water to a nearby village that desperately needs it.
He and fellow driller George Hodgkinson believe the weight of 350 feet of pipe was too much for the inferior pipe casings obtained locally. They are frustrated because they have drilled through hard rock into a gravel pit which, although difficult drilling, indicates a good source of water just below.
The Wells of Hope team, under Van der Zalm’s leadership, is trying to get as many wells as possible drilled in a seven-month period in the remote mountains above the Guatemalan town of Jalapa.
But Van der Zalm is now forced to balance the costs against the need for water. The entire project was funded through donations and there is no cost to the villages.
“Do we abandon this well because it costs more than we expected?” he asks. “Are we here to help these people or simply to look good on paper?”
The team of volunteers left St. Catharines with a convoy of two drilling rigs and a number of support vehicles. They arrived in Guatemala in mid-October. Van der Zalm and engineer Bob Goodwin mapped potential sites while James Squire and Hodgkinson began to drill.
It was the culmination of three years of fundraising and planning. Support came from area schools, especially the Catholic board where Van der Zalm works. Area Rotary Clubs were also very supportive and much of Niagara became involved in the mission.
Three wells, in the villages of Laguna el Pito, Las Brisas, and Paradiso, were drilled quickly and successfully. It looked like the plan to bring water to 30 villages was going to be realized. But things changed quickly. One rig, under control of Squire, penetrated the mountain at a rate of 100 feet per day until water was reached. But on the fourth site, a rig manned by veteran driller Hodgkinson began to run into volcanic rock and slowed to about six feet per day.

Ted is frustrated after facing several set backs.

Then disaster struck. A drilling stem broke from its cable and plunged 350 feet. It could not be recovered and the rig was moved to begin again. While drilling this second well, two bent casings occurred.
Almost simultaneously the second rig, now under Van der Zalm’s control, ground to a halt when the 20-foot drilling stem become lodged below the surface. So far, efforts to retrieve it have failed.Hodgkinson said the team needs about $15,000 in additional equipment and tools to ensure delays don’t happen in the future. In retrospect, Van der Zalm feels he erred in trying to keep the
project costs down. “I didn’t want to scare off financial backers so I tried to keep the expenses to the bare minimum,” he said.
Discussing the wish list he noted, “We could use two drill stems at about $3,500 each, a fishing tool (to retrieve lodged stems) is pegged at $2,500, two drilling jars which are $2,500 each, and drilling bits of different sizes. They run between $500-700 each. A $2,500 sewer camera to help see down the holes to identify problems and solutions would also be useful.”
The team is under some pressure to abandon this well and move on. But Van der Zalm feels a special affinity here because, every day, the villagers come to watch him. They bring him lunch and wait for water to come. The rainy season has ended and soon most water supplies in the region will dry up.
Adversity is not new to Van der Zalm. While performing similar work in Africa, he faced harrowing moments, enduring a plane crash and being beaten into a coma by Tanzanian soldiers. On this trip, his wife Miriam, mother Mary, and five children are living in tents with him. They mortgaged their home and committed their lives to the project.

Ted has become close to those he's trying to help.

He desperately wants to avoid failing the villagers. “Their whole day is survival,” he explains. “They have become real people to us, something that can’t be understood until you meet them.” “One woman told a story of how her children and other villagers are becoming sick, something that never happened before,” Van der Zalm recounted. She and other villagers have asked for help but Van der Zalm knows he cannot possibly help them all.
Funds his team helped raise in Canada are now being dispersed from home and he fears supporters in Canada cannot fully appreciate what he and the team are going through. He understands the need for monetary responsibility but says, “Sometimes to do what is morally right is not always appealing financially.”
It often takes many weeks for supplies to reach Jalapa from Canada and the team can ill-afford such delays. At Christmas, they ere still waiting for a new drill stem to arrive from Canada, more than a month after the first one was lost.
But he says he will persevere. “I ask myself, do I deserve all I have more than a kid deserves a clean glass of water? I just can’t justify that,” he said.Costs may be higher than anticipated but, he asks, “How do I look those children in the eye and say, you’re not worth it?”

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