Over 15 million homes in the United States rely on private, household water wells for their drinking water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Michigan is the largest state market, with over 1 million homes served by private residential wells. Every year, almost half a million new water well drilling projects are undertaken. In order to complete these many projects, almost 18,500 drilling machines must be used by over 8,000 drilling companies.
Water is incredibly important to our lives. In general, people can only survive about 3 days without water. All it can take is a 2% drop in body water to trigger a fuzzy short-term memory, difficulty focusing on pages and screens, and trouble with basic math. On top of that, in almost 40% of Americans the mechanism for thirst is so weak that it’s often mistaken for hunger.
Americans, on average, use almost 80 billion gallons of groundwater per day. That equates to almost 3,000 12-ounce cans for every single person in the country. Because of this extremely high usage, testing groundwater is very important. The most common problem that’s associated with groundwater is something known as “hardness.” Hardness is generally associated with an abundance of calcium, magnesium, or both dissolved in the water. These are known as “Total Dissolved Solids,” or “TDS.” If the TDS levels are above 1,000 mg/L, the water usually is very poor tasting.
In the case of abandoned wells, there is not typically any risk for contamination, but their diameter (which is typically between 3 and 5 feet) can definitely create a physical safety hazard for people, animals, and even construction equipment. These holes are typically very deep as well, so removing the people, animals, and equipment from them is a long and dangerous process. A surprising 40-50% of water in the United States is either “impaired” or “threatened.” If water is “impaired,” it essentially means that the water cannot support any of its intended uses. Usually, this means that it is not safe to consume any fish caught in the water, or that the water is not suitable to drink or swim in.
Water is vital to our survival, and if you’re one of the many people that rely on wells for your water, it’s incredibly important to test the water to make sure it is not impaired or has a high TDS level.