The letter, signed by Director of Planning, Building and Code Enforcement Stephen Haase, told residents that a well test on the proposed site of the sports complex on McKean Road would be conducted from May 4 to May 6, but gave no details. By the time the letter was mailed, a neighborhood activist group had already learned about the test, after one of its members spotted a man walking around the area slated for a sports complex on McKean Road and asked what was going on.

The South Almaden Valley Rural Alliance promptly held an emergency meeting on April 26 to ask whether the test hurt the neighboring wells they depend upon, where would the water drained during the three-day test go, and who would do the test and why?

Regis J. Heim, president of the Almaden Ranch Estates Water Company that supplies water for fire protection to 39 acres within the urban reserve, worries that the test would lower the water table and deplete the 60,000 reserve gallons of water he's required by state law to maintain.

"How can someone schedule a test like this, which puts fire protection at risk in the urban reserve, without any notice?" he wrote in an email to Santa Clara Valley Water District employees, County Supervisor Don Gage, and San Jose District 10 City Councilwoman Pat Dando. "This is a poorly planned and scheduled test that does not serve the needs of the urban reserve. We need advance notice from you, or some other valid California agency, when a test like this is going to be run."

SAVRA members also unleashed a flood of emails and practical questions.

Then Haase's letter, short on answers, started arriving in mailboxes April 29. Another brief letter went out April 30. Finally, the planning department decided on April 30 to hold a community meeting on May 3, the day before the test commenced.

"I understand the test needs to be done. I support the test," said Carol Hallett, who lives near the proposed athletic fields on Schillingsburg Avenue. "At the [SAVRA] meeting we almost couldn't keep 'em in their chairs, they were so upset. You can't live on your land without water. This is my only source of water."

At the center of the conflict are plans to build an "interim" sports complex at the site, which the city will lease from the San Jose Unified School District for $1 a year for 20 years.

SAVRA hired BASELINE to evaluate the draft environmental impact report water analysis produced by Lowney Associates last year. In a report released on June 3, 2003, the company concluded that "the draft EIR cumulative analysis of hydrology, water quality, and water supply is extremely brief and does not address many of the challenging issues raised in this letter" and pointed out that Lowney's groundwater model "is poorly calibrated and therefore the results are not meaningful."

The report also said the water supply in the area wasn't large enough to keep the sports fields alive.

The Lowney hydrologist supervising the test didn't return phone calls from the Almaden Resident.

According to San Jose Planning Department project manager Stan Ketchum, the test involves pumping water out of a shallow well at 50 gallons per minute, 24 hours a day, for three days. The 216,000 gallons of water will flow into a drainage ditch alongside McKean Road. Ketchum said the test shouldn't disrupt other wells in the area. He said a water company would be on call in case of fire.

"And if the water level drops dramatically in the two monitoring wells, the test will be stopped immediately," said Ketchum. He admitted that the community should have been notified sooner.

After the uproar began, Dando decided to find out more.

"Supposedly, the way [the test] was described to me, it's like taking a tablespoon of water from a big body of water," she said.

Dando also agreed the community should have been told sooner about the testing.

Asked how a test conducted in the relatively wet month of May can accurately predict water levels during the dry summer, she said the hydrologist told her it's how you draw from the well that counts, not seasonal rainfall.

"A baseball field is a great deal of dirt. That doesn't need watering. You don't water soccer fields on a regular basis, and it's played during the rainy season," Dando said.

SAVRA remains concerned. "I'm 90 percent certain the test won't harm anything, but why haven't they told us about this?" Hallett asked. "Who in their right mind would jeopardize someone's livelihood?"