Water Supply Protection, Testing, and Interpretation

protection of private Water Supplies starts at home Penn State Cooperative Extension Educators and specialist often help private water supply owners learn how to better manage their water supply let's go along as Brian an extension water specialist helps a family protect their water supply [Music] we just moved here and never had a well before we want to know how to protect our drinking water can you help us yeah protecting your drinking water really boils down to two basic ideas first we have to find the area where the rain is falling that's getting into that well and that landing area that's arounded or we call it a recharge area and then the second thing we want to do is test the water and interpret those results and figure out what they mean the landing area sounds like an airport for raindrops how do we find out where it is well that's a good question let's go take a look at it and see if we can figure that [Music] out when you use water in the house the groundwater gets pulled into the Well from the surrounding Rock in that area you can think of it much like a funnel rain landing on the surface of the ground within the rim of the funnel will infiltrate into the ground and Supply the well with its water the more you use the further the water has to travel to larger in Pennsylvania where most areas get about 40 in of precipitation each year it takes about 100 ft in each Direction around the well to supply enough water for the typical home for four people so if we knew how big the funnel was we would know the landing area that will turn rain into wellwater the first estimate would be a circle about 100 ft so what do you think I think we should move Rusty's pen that is a good idea now that way is uphill won't more water come from that direction than from that direction that's right so how can we improve our idea of the landing area maybe the area should go further up to the top of the hill that's great so if we extend the sides up to the top of the hill we've done a good job of describing the recharge area for this well most recharge areas will be OB long in shape and extend further up slope of the well remember rain landing on the recharge area will move to the water table and to the well this is the area you want to keep clean okay well we've completed our first task here we figured out the recharge area for this well so now we know the area where we want to be careful with the activities that we do around it the next thing we have to do is to do some water testing on the well and figure out what the water quality is aren't there many things to test the water for how do we know which to choose well there are are a few tests that everyone with a private water supply should do a coliform bacteria is really common and inexpensive and that's definitely a test you want to have done every year every few years you should add pH and total dissolve solids they're kind of like a doctor taking your temperature they just tell you the broad quality of the well but they don't give you any real specific information and they shouldn't change much from test to test but what about all the other things that compute groundwater shouldn't we ask the lab to test for everything just to be absolutely safe no that would be very expensive and unnecessary but there are a couple strategies you can need to figure out what test to do the first would be to look at the kinds of symptoms you see in your water I sometimes notice orange colored stains in our sinks and I have to use a lot of soap to get our laundry clean the stains sound like iron and that's a real common problem in Wells and Pennsylvania the demand for soap that you're noticing that's from hardness and that's calcium and magnesium that are coming from the Limestone Bedrock underneath this well but there's some other common problems you can run into also some people notice a rotten egg odor in their well and that's hydrogen sulfide gas others notice blue green stains in their sinks and that's actually Corrosion Of The Copper from their Plumbing that's coming from acidic water and then finally some people see black stains or black Flex in their water and that's manganes and that often comes with iron and is another natural problem the symptoms that Kim mentioned are the only ones that we've noticed maybe we don't have any other problems to worry about not necessarily there's a lot of other pollutants that don't cause any symptoms at all in water and you're not going to find them unless you test for them in that case you might want to look at the recharge area for the well and look at what activities are going on and that'll tell you what you might want to get the water tested for I heard they're going to drill some gas Wells on a neighbor's property over there sometime next year okay well this would be a good time to test your water before the drilling occurs having test results before the activity and after the activity can help you if you ever have to go to court and prove any damages were done to your water supply in this case you might want to get the water tested for barium and chloride before the drilling occurs and then again after the drilling there are mostly just farms and some houses around here right now well both farms and Rural homes with septic systems can cause problems with nitrates and bacteria so you should have those tested are there other land uses that can contaminate groundwater yes lots of folks in Western Pennsylvania have problems with acidic water low PH water manganese sulfate and aluminum and that comes from mining those that live near roadside dumps landfills and factories can have problems with heavy metals and volatile organic compounds and along heavily traveled roads salt can contaminate groundwater with sodium and chloride it's always best to test for these things before the activity occurs so you can show that your water was good before the activity occurred now we know we should test for bacteria pH and total dissolved solids I'll also ask them to test for hardness and iron since they might be causing the symptoms we're noticing and Al ask for nitrate barium and chloride based on the current and expected land uses around our house so where can we go to have these tests run you can find a local water testing lab by going to your local Cooperative Extension Office or you can look on the water extension website well soon thanks for coming back to help us understand this test report well water test reports can be a little confusing the First Column shows your results in this case the test for coliform bacteria was 10 colonies per 100 mlit the other column gives the MCL or the maximum contaminant level this is the maximum level of the pollutant that has been determined to be for people to drink the water some of the other tests have rmcl or recommended standards that just means that they only cause undesirable stains or taste rather than health effects so on our test report the results show that coliform bacteria and iron are above the standards and that our water is considered hard and the test confirmed that the symptoms we've been noticing are from Iron and hardness but it also shows that we have a bacteria problem that we weren't aware of the barium and chide are way below the standards but we'll retest for those after the gas drilling occurs to make sure they don't cause a problem well that's a great job you've really learned a lot about how to protect and manage your private water supply well I've learned that you can't just assume your water is okay you have to identify and protect that recharge area around the well that is responsible for turning rainfall into drinking water I'm going to be careful with any activity in that area and we definitely have to move Rusty's pen my take-home message is the importance of testing our drinking water and keeping the records in a safe place for future use we'll certainly do that and I learned that I need to do research and how we can protect our water area Penn State Cooperative Extension has lots of resources that can help out with this just give me a call if you need to [Music]