Simple Practices to Protect Groundwater

This is the last post (promise!) on the role landowners play in guaranteeing the safety and longevity of the Island’s aquifer.  We can’t leave this subject until we talk about two big groundwater risks that may exist on your property.

First risk:  If you have a well on your property, you may be providing an easy path for contaminants to travel downward into the aquifer.  Your well casing (a large steel pipe usually containing a pump and a column of water) gives you easy access to groundwater, true.  But it also gives dangerous stuff easy access in the other direction, down to the source of what you drink every day.

So check that your wellhead is sealed with a cap made of a durable material like steel, with bolts securing it in place.  Make sure there’s a gasket between the cap and casing.  Without a secure cap and gasket, debris, microorganisms, and even rodents can enter the casing and fall to the groundwater below.

But don’t neglect the area around your wellhead.  Contaminants can travel down the outside of your well casing as well as inside it.  To block this avenue of contamination, keep an unencumbered radius around your well of at least 100 feet.  No running livestock inside this circle or dumping manure there.  No parking vehicles inside the radius either, or storing within it any equipment that contains lubricants and fuels, which can leak out and travel to your well site.

Now to your property’s other big risk to groundwater:  contamination from a septic system, if you have one.  Even a legitimately installed, functioning septic system requires inspection and maintenance—things property owners often neglect because of the “ick” factor around human waste and the fact that most systems are largely below ground and, therefore, out of sight.

Don’t dodge your responsibility, even if you, like many Islanders, had no idea what you were getting yourself into when you bought a property with on-site sewage treatment. When septic systems aren’t maintained, their effluent (wastewater) can contain chemical compounds known, in shorthand, as nitrates and nitrites.  Unlike other chemicals, these compounds aren’t easily filtered out of wastewater as they percolate through the soil and into the aquifer. They’re known carcinogens, so their presence in our drinking water is a very big deal.  And nitrate/nitrite levels are rising at many well sites around the Island.

If you have a septic system, have it checked to see if it was installed legally—not bootlegged in, like some on the Island—and that it’s working properly.  Fix any deficiencies, even though doing so feels as close as imaginable to literally throwing money down a hole.  Then, every five or so years, check to see if the system is retaining all solids and to see if those solids need pumping out—a periodic requirement in all systems.