How To Be A Proactive Well Owner

Get Your Well Completion Report

First, try contacting your local Environmental Health Department. If they don’t have the log then all North State well owners can try to obtain their well logs from the Department of Water Resources North Region Office. To make a request, complete DWR’s Well Completion Report Request form, then call in the information or send the form to the department via mail, fax or email. *Email preferred.

·        Email: nro_wcr@water.ca.gov
·        Phone: (530)-529-7368
·        Address: 2440 Main Street, Red Bluff, CA 96080
·        Fax: (530)-529-7322

*For the best results you should include on the form:

·        The property’s parcel number, which you can obtain from your county assessor’s office.
·        The name of the property owner at the time the well was drilled, which you can obtain from your county recorder’s office.  

Know Your Well

It’s important to know the basics of how your well functions. That includes knowing these key components of a well that are commonly involved with a “dry well.” 

o   Well depth

§  First and foremost you should know how deep your well sits in the ground. This will be the basis of your well analysis. Once you know your well depth you can then look at other key components of your well to see if you have your well is really dry, or if you’re experiencing another issue that can be solved without having to dig a deeper well. 

o   Well screens

§  At its simplest, a well is a solid hollow casing housed in the ground. To allow water to come into the well, filtered screens are placed throughout various portions of the well. It’s important to know where exactly these screens are located, as sometimes what appears to be a “dry well” is actually an issue with screen placement rather than the overall depth of the well.

o   Well pump

§  Your well’s pump is what pulls water from your well into your residence. Knowing the depth of your pump is important because sometimes the pump does not sit at the bottom of the well. If that’s the case, there might be room for the pump to be lowered inside the well. This is a cheaper fix than making a whole well deeper.   

Find more information about well components and how wells work in this newsletter. 

Know What’s Happening Around You

In order to effectively use information about your well, you’ll need to be able to measure your well’s characteristics with groundwater levels around you. The state and counties measure groundwater levels of monitoring wells throughout the Northern Sacramento Valley. You can access this data and search for groundwater levels near you at the state’s Water Data Library.