Dowsing for Water with Bill Getz

Transcribed by Jerome Kazlauskas via otter.ai

Bill Getz  0:00  
And we're going to look where the best part is to get the water and then you feel it pulling down.

Woman  0:04  
I can feel it pulling down.

Bill Getz  0:06  
And I'm holding it back when my fingers. I don't hurt a third.

Brett Barry  0:11  
Welcome back to Kaatscast, the biweekly podcast featuring history, interviews, arts and culture, sustainability and the outdoors in the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley. This week, we dowsed for water with lifelong water dowser (Bill Getz) of Schoharie, New York. He demonstrated his craft at the John Burroughs' Woodchuck Lodge in Roxbury. More on Bill and on this age-old practice after this. Kaatscast is supported by Dixon Roadside. Serving a unique twist on comfort food, using fresh ingredients sourced from the bountiful farms and small businesses of the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley. Open for takeout with a heated patio and indoor seating in Woodstock, New York, and by the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce. Providing services to businesses, community organizations, and local governments in the Central Catskills region. Follow the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce on Facebook and sign up for a weekly email of local events at centralcatskills.org. Need water? You have a choice. Find a random spot, drill, and drill some more, until you hit water or before committing to that spot for a well ... hire a dowser like Bill Getz to find the ideal location for clean clear water with minimal drilling. So what is dowsing? Bill's website defines it as a technique for bringing information from the intuitive or subconscious senses to the attention of the rational mind with a potential value in every area of human endeavor, research and activity. Traditionally speaking, that activity is finding water. Bill recounts on his site how one homeowner's 255-foot well produced five gallons per minute of sulfur and clay-infused water requiring a $7,000 treatment system. When that well failed, Bill douse to site just 25 feet from that original location leading to a new well just 101 feet deep, yielding clean, clear water at a rate of 20 gallons per minute. Using a fork stick, a pendulum, metal rods or even a coat hanger, dowsers connect with the earth and tune in to sources of water below the surface. Bill Getz discovered the craft and knew he had a gift for it at a young age.

Bill Getz  2:58  
When I was four years old, I was in kindergarten and was a war baby of World War II. My parents were building a drive-in restaurant out the country and they needed to have a ... a well put in. My father did not douse, but he was very creative and dreaming and solving problems that his father who died in 1941 (two years before I was born was a very good water dancer) and whether or not I inherited any of that is possible. When the dowser came, he had a wide rod like this and he walked along and he found a spot where the rod pulled down I was watching and he had found a well that they dug for 10 feet deep and the water came up to within a foot of the surface. It was almost spring-fed. That well is still being used today.

He laid the stick down on the ground when he was negotiating with my father and I went over picked her up and tried to imitate what he was doing and I walked along with it. It was going to pull down. Oh, wow! Like that! And he ... he comes over, picks it up and he says, "Don't be afraid of it." He said, "You've got a natural ability to find water." He says, "Let me show you how." He spent 20 to 30 minutes with me ... did talk to my father. He talked to me and he said, "But, you're gonna have to practice this on a regular basis before you try to find a well." Well, we had a local farmer that was coming to our restaurant and pumping 10-55 gallon drums of water a day, and then the third day came and I said, "You know, I might be able to find your water down by your barn." So I went down, I found a little wellsite. It was 12 feet deep. The son put the well in and it's still in use today.

Brett Barry  5:10  
Bill has a gift not only for finding the best site for water, but for determining how deep to drill. He works with homeowners and several trusted drilling companies that have found success through Bill's methods. At first, Bill Getz dowsed for free with a request.

Bill Getz  5:28  
Neighbors (all of a sudden) realize that I was doing this and they asked me to come over a dowser site and I was doing it and saying like, "Make their contribution to the fire department or the ambulance squad or somebody," and what I found out as well drillers were wanting to drill where it was easiest for them to drive to and if the well was down here (instead of up here), then they would say, "No, we want to drill right here by the driveway." They didn't want to drive across the lawn and have to do a 50-60-foot trench and I asked the people what happened. Did they ever make a contribution? No, we never did that. And what about the well? Well, they drove 400 feet. I said, "Well, I predicted 85 for you." And I said, "The site's still over there if you ever want to redrill that this time it's going to cost you and after I had joined the American Society of Dowsers, I found out that most of the dowsers charged some sort of a fee because they were putting in anywhere from ... from one to four hours worth of their time to go do it.

Brett Barry  6:46  
These days billed charges $330 to douse a site plus travel time. He'll travel up to an hour from Schoharie, but can recommend other dowsers if you're out of his range.

Bill Getz  6:58  
For every job I've given away to four other dowsers, I get two more phone calls coming in the major Good job, you know, I'm 78 ... I want to enjoy my life entirely. I didn't do it to be working full time and retirement.

Originally dowsers used to walk back and forth across property and they'd hold the stick and look for water veins. Every time it pulls down, they mark where that was and move about 10 feet away. Let's do it again and do it again until they've covered the whole property, and then they check and see where the marks were in which way the water veins were flowing and where they gather together. Well, there was an easier way to do it. Instead of spending two to three hours walking the fields, and then trying to figure out and analyze what every vein was; and if you're just looking for water with a dowsing rod, you'll find dew, you'll find water (that's not drinkable water), you'll find water that can't be drilled, you'll find all sorts of water that don't mean what really came to do. What I do is I set up a program (search program) of where's the best place to drill to get the greatest amount of good tastes and clear potable water that will meet the homeowners needs and not interfere with somebody else's water supply.

Brett Barry  8:34  
The search program is a metaphor. Bill asks the rods, the earth, his intuition (maybe) to guide the rods to the best spot for clean drinkable water.

Bill Getz  8:48  
And you scan the property across like this, but I just ask, you know, where's the best place to get the greatest amount of good tastes and clear potable water and the rod turns and stops. So, I'll put two flags in here and line them ... line them up with the old rod and make sure exactly where they go. Then, I'd move down on the lawn and ask the question again and scan it across and I get a spot that lines up with a big tree that's over on the wall over there. I'll do that from a third site and where the three lines all come together. That's where the weld spot is to drill; and from there, I'll ask other questions. How many water veins will feed this well? One, two ... like that a two and I'll ask how deep is it to the first vein, how thick is that made, how deep to the second vein, and so on; and I also ask how deep does a well need to be drilled in order to give an adequate water supply. Because you have to set the pump 10 feet below the bottom vein and at least 10 feet above the bottom as the well. So, you got to add on at least 20 feet off the bottom thickness (the water vein). Then, you ask how deep do you need to drill the well to have a good reserved up for the family and it might tell me that the water is at 16 feet on the first of IP 40 feet on the second, but it might say that in order to have an adequate supply, you need to go down 138 feet.

Man  10:32  
How does it signal that?

Brett Barry  11:21  
Asking specific yes or no questions and getting response--hints at some kind of a psychic conversation with the earth. It's the kind of response--some get from a Ouija board. Answers coming maybe not from the board itself, but from metaphysical energy between the players and the answers they earnestly seek. Dowsing with a stick. A yes response pulls the stick down sometimes forcefully. With metal rods, a yes response pulls the rods together.

Bill Getz  11:54  
There are many theories out there that many dowsers use. That's all get really weird. I just think it's the energy from my thoughts connected with the feeling I have towards nature. I'd like to go to a spot and spend 10 or 15 minutes just feeling close to the land before I begin to douse.

Brett Barry  12:19  
To see more about Bill, his tools of the trade, and a long list of testimonials, check out getzgoodwater.com. That's Getz with a Z. For more on the Wild Saturdays Speaker Series at Woodchuck Lodge, go to jbwoodchucklodge.org. Kaatscast is a production of Silver Hollow Audio. Please be sure to subscribe wherever podcasts are found for free and automatic delivery every two weeks. Until next time, you can find us on Instagram @kaatscast. Thanks again to our local sponsors (Dixon Roadside and the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce) and to you our listeners for your contributions to the show. If you'd like to contribute, just click "Support" at kaatscast.com. Until next time, I'm Brett Barry. Thanks for listening.