This article summarizes how to to track groundwater data and utilize groups for a more organized workflow.
We’ve added a few features to help our customers keep track of wells and groundwater. These features are available to any paying customer, but some customers may not (yet) have parcel groups enabled. Just contact us if that’s the case.
Updates to Well Reports
This April we deployed major changes and data updates to Well Reports. These features are available in both California and Washington. Here’s a summary:
Why not a Wells Layer? Why are they “reports” ?
Most states track changes to groundwater wells. For example, when digging the well, when making it deeper, or when disabling the well. We thought it would be more useful to be able to track the history, rather than just see individual well. Please give us feedback
Well Reports layer shows every nearby well report at the same location
You might have noticed that not all the well reports were accessible up until recently, and you could only see a representative well for the purpose of getting the groundwater depth. We changed that. You can see how many well reports exist at a particular location. Sometimes the number is quite high:
What’s in that 22 ? Click the triangle to find out.
The number of wells will show up in the sidebar. Then click to get more details.
Each well report can be reviewed, and optionally added to a Parcel Group with the “Add” button.
The “Link ->” takes you to the well report PDF. In some cases, the well report had multiple pages, so there will be multiple links (that’s how the state scanned the report).
Adding a Well Report to a Parcel Group lets you track:
- all the wells on a farm or investment
- history of well output (GPM)
- depth of the well (when available)
- by looking at the PDF, you can confirm the ownership of the well, and its exact location.
Why are there so many Well Reports in one spot? Why isn’t the Well Report within the parcel where the well is located?
That’s a common question. Most states track well report locations by latitude and longitude of the center of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) section. Here’s a diagram from washington.edu Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, with modifications:
As a result, if you’d like to be sure you collect all the Well Reports for a parcel:
1. enable the Township-Section-Range layer,
2. change the base map image to Light Gray Canvas,
3. click your parcel so it is outlined in yellow,
4. disable the parcel layer,
5. and find a triangle at the center of the section for your parcel.
How to Add Well Reports to Parcel Groups
We allow you to add as many well reports to a parcel group as you need.
Running a PDF report on the parcel group will now include those wells.
