What can I do when my well goes dry?

In times of drought or increased water use, water levels in an aquifer or well can drop below a submersible pump, the pump intake, or even below the bottom of the well. As a private well owner, your options vary when faced with this situation, depending on the kind of well you have and the geologic conditions in your area.

If you have a shallow dug or bored well, you may not have many options. These wells collect water that seeps in from the surrounding geologic formation and are generally built in areas without significant aquifers. If it's a really dry year, the water table may have dropped below your well, leaving no water in the formation to seep in.

Inspect your well to see if the well is dry, or it might be that the water level has dropped below the pump intake. If that is the case, you may be able to lower your pump and still have water. If your well is dry, your best short-term option in this situation is to have a potable water tank available as a backup. You can have water delivered or haul it yourself from a municipal source. If you do haul water, be sure that the connection to your water system is sealed and all of the pipe and equipment has been disinfected. Practicing water conservation until the situation changes will limit the amount of water you would need to haul.

If you have been at your location a very long time, you probably have had this problem before and may already have a solution in place. If not, talk to your neighbors and find out if this is a common situation. Maybe it's something that often happens in the summer, or if it's just an unusual year.

If this is a regular occurrence, then you might consider a more permanent solution if one is available to you. For example, another option would be to drill a deeper well.

In general, large-diameter wells are not preferred anyway because they're getting water from closer-to-land surface. But if that's the kind of well you have, it may be because there are no aquifers available for water supply in your area. To find out, contact the agency responsible for maintaining well logs in your state or jurisdiction, your state geological survey, or a local driller, and find out what possible options you might have.

If you have a drilled well finished in a sand and gravel or bedrock aquifer, you also may be able to drill deeper. However, it's likely that your well isn't dry, but that the water level in the well has dropped below the pump intake.

This could be because of well interference or a number of other reasons, including drought or more water use nearby. Maybe a large capacity well for irrigation or industry is nearby and has lowered the water levels in the aquifer below your pump. It's important to keep water level measurements and pump setting depth in your records for just this reason. If you can determine that there is still water in your well and your pump can be lowered below that depth, it's a fixable problem. If it turns out that lowering the pump won't help, then you may need to consider options for drilling deeper. This will depend on where your well is finished in the aquifer and the other aquifers available in your area.

If your well is finished near the bottom of an aquifer, for example, drilling deeper may not be an option unless there is another usable aquifer in a deeper geologic unit. On the other hand, if there's a plenty of aquifer depth below the well, drilling deeper will be an option. Currently in California, where they are having a long-term drought, water levels in some aquifers have dropped 200-300 feet or more, and many private wells have gone dry. The only solution in some of these areas is to drill a new much deeper well. Your well logs should have the well depth on it. You can use this information along with aquifer information from your state agency in charge of aquifer mapping, and your local driller's expertise to determine if a deeper well would be an option.

The Private Well Class is a collaboration between the Rural Community Assistance Partnership and the University of Illinois, through the Illinois State Water Survey and the Illinois Water Resource Center and funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The views expressed here are solely from the class authors and not endorsed or reviewed by US EPA. For more information on private wells, sign up for our free 10-week email course at PrivateWellClass.org.