The test was part of an environmental-impact study to determine whether the property could support a proposed sports complex, which would include soccer, baseball and softball fields.

Although planning department representatives said the day before the test that the procedure involved pumping 50 gallons per minute out of the well for 72 hours, during the test the flow rate fluctuated above and below the target rate. Planners say the fluctuations would not put the test results in question.

Planning department project manager Stan Ketchum also said reports that the regulator was broken for part of the test were not correct. "At one point during the test, some irregular readings were noticed, so a new flow meter was installed. There was no impact on the accuracy of the well-test results," he said.

At least one resident who walked over to the test site said that the test looked haphazard.

"When I went by [the test site] the first day I said, 'How do you know you're pumping 50 gallons per minute?' No one could really tell me," said Carol Hallett, who lives on Schillingsburg Road in San Jose's urban reserve area, near the Caglia Ranch well. "I was watching the other end of the pipe, and it really didn't look like a lot [of water]."

Hallett said while she was at the site on May 6, Leo Alvarez, a hydrologist for Lowney Associates, the company contracted by the city to test the well, told his workers the water flow was too low. "He said, 'You guys, you aren't pumping enough water'," said Hallett.

Alvarez did not return calls from the Almaden Resident for comment.

Local residents were told at a community meeting on May 3 that the test was supposed to be a 50-gallon-per-minute, 72-hour stress test that would help determine if the Caglia Ranch well's water supply would be enough to maintain the proposed fields without affecting the other well users' water supply. But on May 7, Ketchum said the purpose of the test wasn't "to literally test at any particular flow rate. We wanted to see what would change the aquifer. It also wasn't meant to replicate what the [sports complex] would do."

So did the aquifer change during the test? "There was no miserable reduction," said Ketchum. "Seriously, the consultants said there was no reduction."

Ketchum said he didn't know how much the city paid to conduct the test. Despite the fluctuations, there are no plans to run the test again, according to the project manager. "But hydrologists are continuing to monitor the aquifer, just as they've done since last December," Ketchum said.