NGWA Event and Education Recordings Archive

Water Well Maintenance – Maintaining Production and More Consistent Quality

Water Wells are becoming recognized as the most important asset in a groundwater system. As water systems age deterioration is an almost inevitable consequence. In groundwater systems water wells will experience deposits building up depending upon many factors. Formation damage as well as biological and mineral deposits will result in lost capacity problems and associated water quality problems including Total Coliforms being detected in pumped water samples. Historically specific capacity has been utilized to determine the frequency of rehabilitation and maintenance. This reliance on specific capacity is the single largest contributor to operate to failure approach to well maintenance. During the past 15 years a time based approach has been very effective at maintaining wells since deposits in water wells are much more effectively managed. Novel ideas and understanding about well problems and solutions will be presented based on many years of experience. Effective rehabilitation and maintenance can be very effective at maintaining peak efficiency as well as maintaining more consistent water quality. With budgets getting tighter and ever increasing energy costs of water production cost effective well maintenance can be used for fixed budget pricing and driving down life cycle costs. New effective and economical method of well rehabilitation and maintenance will be presented with case studies of cost savings and solving difficult Total Coliform issues.