[The Well] well stewardship

[Stuart Smith]

Cliff has well-defined the overwhelming task that could come from being a forum for a world's individual well problems and kudos for the effort to leverage the message with such a broad range of entities. As we know, each well has its own characteristics and any problem such as that with the hydrofractured well in our discussion has its own history and circumstances. No surprise, I imagine, I am enthusiastic about promoting ground water and well stewardship (a step above "maintenance") as a strategic approach. Stewardship is a values concept. It is the term used for the ideal human role when church bodies, for example, weigh in on care of creation. Stewardship is a contrast to exploitation. NGWA can play a strong role in promoting stewardship, which can encompass public knowledge of ground water resources and their own water supply sources and fostering an ethic of maintenance toward water and wastewater systems. There are a lot of tools available: Most states and other entities have ground-water education assets and programs. USDA and Ag Extension have excellent educational tools and (along with some states) even "do it yourself" wellhead protection worksheets for farms and homeowners. NGWA recently developed an education program along with USDA that can be adapted for public education (maybe best as a long webinar). We ourselves have developed a program for sanitarians and others interested in individual and small-public systems that emphasizes maintenance, and how to do it systematically. We do need the 13,000+ membership involved.

I'll be a little controversial for sake of discussion - I think our post-WWII water well technology system had the effect that people view wells as commodities. Developing a well water supply just is not so hard as it used to be when you had to dig it and brick it up, or even drill it with a cable tool rig and fit it with a deep well working head pump. If (at least here in the East) a well can be cheaply drilled in a day, and is only visibly a little plastic pipe, people have trouble valuing it. Your truck sits in the garage and says "make my payment and polish me". The well invisibly and (with submersibles) almost silently yields water to a tank hidden in the crawl space and via hidden pipes to a faucet. Your truck visibly rusts over the wheel wells, but the clogging pump intake is 200 ft down in that little plastic pipe. I know I have been preaching well maintenance for well over 20 years to a client group (water plant operators) who should get it, but most still seem immune. Maybe the new USEPA emphasis on "sustainable infrastructure" can help - scrambling to remain a nation with a First World infrastructure.

What can we all be doing to make what we do (universally invisible and poorly understood) more visible and appreciated? Stuart

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********* Stuart Smith, CGWP ***********

******* Ground Water Science *******

***** Upper Sandusky, Ohio USA *****

**** www.groundwaterscience.com ****

******419.209.0298 *** Psalm 111 *******

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