2 Water Well Record Information and Submission Requirements

During the installation of a water supply well, which may be constructed for domestic, public, municipal or other water uses (e.g., industrial, irrigation), a well contractor will typically record details about the construction of the well on a standardized form (Figure 1). Categories of well record information include well construction items, such as grout, casing, screens and drilling method; hydrogeologic items, such as static water level, geologic material and estimated yield; and general information, such as the well location, the owner’s name, and the driller’s name (Table 1; Ganley, 1989). According to a 1989 survey of well record databases in the United States, the three most commonly reported items on a well record were the owner’s name, the driller’s name and the static water level, whereas the three least commonly reported items were well packers, drilling fluid and the geologic formation.

Image showing an example of a well record form from Nova Scotia, Canada using fictitious data

Figure 1 Example of a well record form from Nova Scotia, Canada using fictitious data (Nova Scotia Environment and Labor, 2004).

Table 1 Examples of information collected on well record forms (after Ganley, 1989).

Category Description
Well Construction • Unique well number (well labels affixed to water wells are used in some jurisdictions, as shown in Figure 2)
• Method of well construction, including grouting and installation of screens
• Well depth and casing depth
• Well construction materials, including details about well screens, grout and casing (material, diameter, drive shoe)
• Well pump details (in some jurisdictions a separate form may be used to record this information)
• A sketch of the well components in profile
Hydrogeology • Stratigraphy encountered during drilling and lithological types
• Depth of water bearing zones
• Static water level
• A sketch showing stratigraphy, water bearing zones and water level
• Water yield and details of the yield test (e.g., specific capacity, which is the volumetric rate of well discharge per unit decline of water level)
• General water quality information (e.g., temperature, salinity, turbidity, color, odor)
General • Well contractor information (company name, driller license number)
• Well owner information (name and address)
• Location of water well, including method used to locate water well and estimated accuracy of location (could be a grid reference, community name or location coordinates)
• Distance between the well and key features, such as roads, septic systems, oil tanks, surface water drainage
• A sketch of the well location relative to important features
Photo showing a drilled well in Ontario, Canada, with well tag showing unique code (Well ID) affixed to the casing

Figure 2 Drilled well in Ontario, Canada, with well tag showing unique code (Well ID) affixed to the casing.

Following the completion of a water well, the well construction record (also known as the well log) is usually submitted by the well contractor to the appropriate government agency responsible for the oversight of well construction activities in that jurisdiction. The well construction record is then stored in a centralized location as part of a well record database (Ganley, 1989). Nowadays, well records are typically stored in an electronic database, which makes it easier to share the data with users of the information. Nevertheless, well record databases remain difficult to access in many jurisdictions (Perrone and Jasechko, 2019).

The construction of a water well, especially a drilled well, often requires specialized heavy machinery that is expensive to mobilize and operate, and therefore provides a valuable opportunity to collect subsurface groundwater and geological information that is otherwise difficult to obtain. Well records permit this valuable information to be captured in a consistent format during the construction of water wells and archived for future access.

In some jurisdictions the submission of well records is voluntary, while in others it is required by law, often as part of a regulation concerning water well construction. The requirement to submit a well record can also depend on the intended use of the well. For example, some jurisdictions may only require the submission of a well record for public water supply wells and so domestic water wells are not captured in the database. A voluntary framework for the submission of well records can result in a lower rate of submission compared to a mandatory framework (Perrone and Jasechko, 2017). In Canada, all provinces have enacted legislation requiring the submission of well logs, with British Columbia being the most recent (e.g., 2016) province to require contractors to submit well records (GW Solutions Incorporated, 2013; Province of British Columbia, 2016).

The number of available well records in any given jurisdiction can vary significantly and is often related to the size of the population reliant on domestic water wells for their water supply. For example, the heavily populated state of California in the United States has about one million records in their compiled state-level well record database (Perrone and Jasechko, 2017) whereas the province of Prince Edward Island (2021) in Canada has about 28,000 well records. The number of available records in a database can also depend on the regulatory framework, including whether well record submission is voluntary (e.g., Yukon Territory in Canada) or legislated, and for which types of water supplies (e.g., domestic versus public).

Compliance with applicable regulatory requirements for mandatory well record submission is another key factor that will determine the number of available records in a database because enforcement of well submission requirements is a persistent challenge. For example, it is estimated that the Nova Scotia Well Logs Database (Nova Scotia Environment, 2020) contains records for only about 50 to 60 percent of the domestic wells currently in use in the province (Kennedy and Polegato, 2017). In a national survey of well record database managers in the United States, the estimated proportion of wells captured in well record databases ranged from 5 percent to 100 percent (Perrone and Jasechko, 2017; Perrone and Jasechko, 2019).

Although the governance level of well record databases can vary anywhere from the subregional (e.g., counties in California, USA) to the national level (e.g., well record data managed by the British Geological Survey or Australian Bureau of Meteorology), governance of well record data is typically at the same level as the jurisdiction’s governance of groundwater resources. For example, in Canada, just as provinces and territories have jurisdiction over the management of freshwater resources, they are also responsible for managing well construction activities and well record databases.

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Water Well Record Databases and their Uses Copyright © 2022 by Gavin Kennedy. All Rights Reserved.