How to Reduce the Risk of Well Water Contamination

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Water is always a very vital factor for human survival; hence, the need to ensure that water in your well is not contaminated. Special considerations and care can help prevent your water from contamination, because wells form a direct path for entry of contaminants into the ground. The following are some of the considerations to protect your well water from contamination.

Consider the Location

If the location of your well is near a pollution source, then chances of contamination are very high if further protection measures are not adapted. To avoid such instances, make sure that the choice of your well location is away from systems such as a septic system or a livestock courtyard. If you have such systems in your homestead, consider having your well drilled on the uphill side of the systems, rather than on the downhill side.

The direction that a pollutant follows after it gets into the ground can be very different from the surface slope, thus different from the surface water direction. Therefore, ensuring that the well is on the uphill side is a safer measure in preventing well water contamination, as it prevents the pollutant from entering into the ground through the well mouth.

Consider a Deep Well

When you have a shallow well, chances are that the well obtains its water from just near the surface. It means that any pollutants from your home easily get their way into the well and contaminate the water. Also, when it rains, rainwater pushes pollutants into the well. With permeable soils such as sand, contaminants carried by rainwater get into groundwater within a very short period ranging from hours to days after it rains.

Therefore, if you plan to have your well drilled on permeable soil, the well should be more than 30 metres underneath the water table to reduce the risks of contamination.

Consider Other Existing Wells

For an existing well, location choice cannot be a consideration for avoiding water contamination. In the past, people used to drill wells in locations that were most convenient, rather considering water contamination. Over time, the location of the well relative to homestead practices such as livestock yard may expose the well to contamination. Drilling a new well may not be possible, perhaps because of the high initial costs or it's simply infeasible.

In such circumstances, you can keep on testing you water annually for any further action. You can also liaise with the health department in your area to check if any pollutants have been recorded in nearby wells. In addition, don't forget to consult a qualified driller like Milne Water Drilling after every ten years to check on the mechanical condition of your well and repair if it necessary.

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16 March 2015

Sharing the Family Farm with Siblings and Cousins

Hello, my name is Marta. I grew up on a family farm, and as a girl, I knew that I was not the front runner for inheriting the farm. I thought my parents would err on the side of tradition and give the farm to my brother. However, as we grew up together – weeding gardens, giving horseback riding lessons and driving the tractor – we found that we really enjoyed working together. We also found that we loved working with our cousins who lived on the farm next door. Ultimately, when our parents decided to retire, we all decided to share the farm. Through that experience, we learned a lot, and I want to share that here in this blog. Please, explore, enjoy and learn through our adventures in agriculture.