Wells, explainedhow a private well is permitted, built, recorded and tested in Virginia

Where the well goes is settled on paper first. The site plan filed with the application has to locate the proposed well site, the property boundaries, any actual or proposed sewage disposal systems, recorded easements and every other source of contamination within 100 feet of the proposed well.

• A sanitary survey investigates obvious sources of potentially toxic or dangerous substances within 200 feet of the proposed well.
• No private well within five feet of a property line.
• No private well within 50 feet of the line of an adjoining property of three acres or more used for an agricultural operation, subject to the exemptions the statute lists.
• No private well in a utility easement unless the utility's permission is documented.
• Special precaution when the well would sit within a 60 degree arc directly downslope of an existing or intended onsite sewage disposal system or another known source of pollution.
• A drinking water well at least 50 feet from an active or permitted drainfield for a Class IIIA or IIIB well, and 100 feet for a Class IIIC well, with the reserve drainfield counted.

Those distances put the well site, the drainfield and its reserve area in competition for the same ground, which is one reason the utilities pass in how Bowman reads land asks about both.

The rock has a say as well. A U.S. Geological Survey study of the Blue Ridge part of the New River basin tied landscape position to the odds of a well crossing water-bearing fractures and to yield, a study-area finding covered with the other yield figures, not a forecast for any one site.

Within 30 days of completing the construction, alteration, abandonment or deepening of a private well, the owner, the owner's agent or the water well systems provider has to furnish the health department a completed uniform water well completion report.

The well's own numbers get written down at this stage. The statute has the certified water well systems provider certify the storage capacity and the yield of the well on a VDH form when the well is completed. For scale, USGS put average yields in the crystalline rocks of its Blue Ridge study area at about 1 to 15 gallons per minute, with wells above 40 gallons per minute not uncommon; what those figures measure is set out under well yield.

Then the health department inspects. The statute calls for an inspection after construction to assure the construction standards are met, and the regulation says no private well may be placed in operation without a written inspection statement. The one exception lets the well run before inspection only to test the mechanical soundness of the system.

Once the well is in use, the state's part narrows to the record. VDH says records of private wells were not required before 1990, that the Virginia Environmental Information System (VENIS) has held private well records since 2003, and that the local VDH office maintains well records.

After installation, VDH says, all later testing is at the well user's discretion, and VDH has no authority to test private well quality or to require anyone else to test it. Its guidance does recommend testing for bacteria and nitrate every year.

A sale adds no state requirement: the well regulations call for neither a well inspection nor a water quality test at a property transfer, though a locality or a lender may, and whether you need a well test to sell takes that up. A well serving more than one house raises its own questions about easements and agreements, set out in shared wells.

A spring is a different water source. The private well regulations exclude wells constructed to modify or develop springs, and what a spring or a creek on a parcel means is taken up in springs, creeks and water rights.