Of the calls that reached the Bothell-Kenmore Reporter, the comments of Dwayne Brunnell were typical.

The parent of at least one student at Bothell’s Maywood Elementary School, Brunnell said he was more than slightly surprised to learn of King County’s plans to dig six deep but narrow wells near the school.

The wells are part of an effort to get the stalled Brightwater sewer project moving again. Specifically, county officials say the wells would allow workers easier access to a busted drilling machine trapped some 330 feet underground.

The county wants to place the wells along a southern access road to Maywood. That road is situated near the intersection of 104th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 195th Street.

Brunnell said he had what he thought were some obvious concerns about safety, noise and so on. He also seemed to indicate the plan had been sprung on the school community with little notice.

A spokesperson for the King County Wastewater Treatment Division, Annie Kolb-Nelson said it was her understanding some community complaints had reached the sewer district, mostly from parents of Maywood students. Residents also apparently contacted the city.

In response to resident concerns, at the city’s request, county officials held what proved to be a sparsely attended public forum on the plans for the wells at the Bothell Library June 18.

A community relations planner for the Waste Water Division, David Freed said about a dozen people turned out for the informational session, with several of those in the audience representing the city and the Northshore School District.

The school district Board of Directors must approve the drilling of the wells and was scheduled to vote on the issue at its June 23 meeting. That session took place after Reporter deadlines for this issue.

According to Kolb-Nelson, plans call for four dewatering wells and one monitoring well. The idea is to remove ground water, which both she and Freed quickly stated would not reach any local waterways. Freed said the county already had received an OK to pump water into a sanitary sewer.

According to information supplied by the county, the malfunctioning drill isn’t really under water. But with all the groundwater above it, workers trying to reach the drill would suffer atmospheric pressure similar to that experienced by deep-sea divers. Without the removal of some of the groundwater, each repair crew only could spend only a small amount of time — approximately 45 minutes, said Kolb-Nelson — working on the drill and would have to undergo a depressurization process before returning to the surface.

In the end, Kolb-Nelson and others said not having the dewatering wells would add greatly to the time and expense involved with fixing the underground drill. Kolb-Nelson added dewatering wells are not new ideas, but are fairly common undertakings during underground construction projects.

“We (the county) have done a lot of dewatering projects,” she said.

Again, according to information provided by the county, the wells would be about eight inches in diameter.

“The area would be secured, it would be monitored,” Kolb-Nelson said. “The wells would be covered with metal sheeting … The school itself would still be accessible.”

As of late last week, Freed said the county was waiting not only for school-district permission, but also street use permits from the city. Still, he expected the work to get under way in late June. The county plans on having the project finished by the fall.

Officials said the wells and the repair job will not affect or damage the local watertable and will not lead to sinkholes.

When it stalled, the drill was about 1.5 miles into a two-mile segment of tunneling between Kenmore and Bothell. The stretch represents a small part of the total 13-mile Brightwater conveyance tunnel. Workers need to replace a worn structural rim on the drilling machine’s 17.5-foot diameter cutter head. The county said moving the drill out of the ground for repairs is not a viable option.