WEST CHESTER, Pa. (WPVI) — Officials are urging residents to cut back on water use as worsening drought conditions strain groundwater supplies and leave some wells running dry in Chester County.<\/p>\n
Rich Keyes, who has spent 40 years drilling water wells, said he has never seen conditions this severe.<\/p>\n
“It’s absolutely a groundwater emergency,” Keyes said.<\/p>\n
About 40 percent of Chester County residents rely on wells for their water, and Keyes said he has received a growing number of calls from homeowners dealing with depleted supplies.<\/p>\n
The state has placed four Pennsylvania counties, including Chester, under a drought warning, while the rest of the region remains under a drought watch.<\/p>\n
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is asking residents to help conserve water after a dry spring. Officials are recommending a voluntary reduction in water usage of 10% to 15%, even with rain in the forecast.<\/p>\n
SeungAh Byun, of the Chester County water resources authority, said recent rainfall has not been enough to replenish groundwater levels.<\/p>\n
“It’s probably not going to be enough. Even when we had four inches two weekends ago, it wasn’t enough to recharge the groundwater wells,” Byun said.<\/p>\n
County officials are encouraging simple conservation measures, such as taking shorter showers, skipping car washes and avoiding lawn watering.<\/p>\n
For now, the reductions are voluntary, but authorities warn that they could change if conditions worsen. Some homeowners are already reporting low water levels.<\/p>\n
“And we’ve heard from some homeowners who have low water levels,” Byun said.<\/p>\n
Keyes said it will take significant rainfall to reverse the drought’s impact and warned the situation could deteriorate further.<\/p>\n
“No matter where you get your water from, if there’s a lack of rain, then we could really, really be heading for a bad fall\/winter,” he said.<\/p>\n
Officials in the state of Delaware declared a drought watch as dry conditions persist across the region.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST CHESTER, Pa. (WPVI) — Officials are urging residents to cut back on water use as worsening drought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[297834,192,79],"class_list":["post-685054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-297834","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}