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How Location and Condition Affect Well Water Quality

Admin • Jan 21, 2020

Water Well — Crane, MO — Lefty's Pump & Drilling

Because you depend on your well as a main water source, you must take steps to ensure that your well water maintains its quality and stays usable and drinkable. If your well is old and you haven't checked its water quality in a while, or you just bought a new property with an old well, then you may want to reassess that well's condition and location.

Here is some important information about how your well water may become contaminated, the most common types of contaminants, and why you may need a new well.

Ways That Well Water Can Be Contaminated

Well water is especially vulnerable to contamination because your well is drawing up water from a shared aquifer that likely lies under, and is used by, several nearby properties. Each of these properties is used in a different way and some of those uses may affect your groundwater quality.

Here are some reasons why your well may become contaminated.

Your Well is Too Close to a Contaminating Source

Certain changes to your property directly affect the quality of the groundwater that reaches the well. For example, a nearby auto shop could leak automobile fluids which can seep into the groundwater nearest your well.

Your Well Casing is Breaking Down

Your well casing not only protects your pump and other electrical systems, it also offers some protection against contaminants. Cracks in the casing may allow contaminated water located closer to the surface, which has had less time to filter through the soil, to seep into your well.

Your Property Has an Abandoned Well

You may have an unused, improperly abandoned, well on your property and not even know about it. This unsealed or poorly sealed well could leak contaminants into your groundwater if it shares the same aquifer.

Your Neighbor's Activities Are Contaminating your Well

Chances are that your neighborhood has changed over the years since your well was built. This may mean that your neighbors changed their land use during this time. For example, your neighbors may have stayed far away from the well when it was first built but have since decided to raise animals and are now creating containments near the well.

At the time your well was built, the location may have been perfect, but circumstances changed. While the well still draws water and the parts and pumps are still in good working order, the groundwater in that location may no longer be ideal.

Types of Common Well Contaminants

Well water contamination comes in many forms, some of which are biological, and some are chemicals. Some are naturally occurring and eliminated through filtering, while others are more difficult to screen out. Here is a list of some of the more common well contaminants:

Bacterial contamination from fecal matter, decaying plants and animals, and viruses.
Nitrates from natural breakdown of organic material in the soil.
Fertilizers that aren't well managed and wash into the water sources.
Metals either naturally from the ground or as a result of industrial operations.

Some of these problems are resolvable by relining your well or treating the water. However, if your well is damaged, or the groundwater is contaminated, then the problem becomes more complicated.

If you have found that your well is contaminated or has other problems that are beyond repair, then you may want to seal that well and dig a new one. Lefty's Pump & Drilling can both help you install a new well as well as properly seal your old one so that it does not cause groundwater problems. Contact us today for an appointment and we will give you an estimate.

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