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t Abandoned Wells -- Public Hazards and Threat to Groundwater by Edwin A. Ritchie Senior Engineer,Water Resources (Retired) Department of Water Resources, State of California "Child Rescued from Open Well" was one of thousands of newspaper and magazine headlines that appeared in th world press in October- November 1987. All dealt with the near-tragedy of toddler Jessica McClure,who fell into ai eight-inch hole in Midland,Texas. Her ordeal,rescue,and subsequent recovery tugged at the heat-strings of Americ, and much of the world. In the not-too-distant futurewe can expect to relive these events in a movie-of-the-week television special. Unfortunately,such incidents do not always end happily. A similar incident reported with equal fervor by the work press occurred exactly 40 years ago here in California. On April 9, 1949, a three year old girl named Kathy Fiscu; stumbled into a 120 foot-deep open well in San Marino. The eyes of the nation were focused on the massive,but futile attempt to rescue her. The incident was one of televisionsfirst live news coverage operations and it inspired a grippinf dramatic motion picture ("The Well", 1951). D D This tragic episode led ti�� tarr r�..�.o an amendment f the"Ct�ii.�` thd S Hun' I I ,r rrrrsdemeantirfor�>i at►C t�►}►t� i'all tfr, t;S ��; �nng�. dangeroust`� l�il " b; itCi�ltrf � ti vt►es"tSI�`�fiett� to persons legal on,the premises or to minors under the age of 12. Since that time these prowVhivisions of State law have been known as tlijk�ii � n These two episodes are by no means the only such incidents reported. Sometimes the events have gone almost unnoticed. Less tragic are incidents involving livestock,usually reported in the tongue-in-cheek fashion reserved for "dumb" animals. Abandoned wells not only present physical hazards but they can also threaten the quality of the ground water resources (and the public health)they were originally constructed to extract. Pollutants can easily find their way to useable water supplies via abandoned wells. Worse yet many abandoned wells have been deliberately or unwittingly used for the disposal of solid or liquid waste, even though disposal is in violation of our water pollution control laws. In one Particularly repugnant case in Southern California, manure from a dairy farm was washed into an old well. The resolution of these issues is to destroy abandoned wells in such a way that the potential physical hazard and threat to ground water quality are eliminated. The only sure way to adequately destroy a well is to completely fill the well with inert material and, where appropriate, impervious material. "Bridge plugging" (i.e. placing impervious plugs at designated depths below ground) won't do it. They're only effective so long as the bridge remains in tact. One good earthquake can make the plug ineffective. The Kathy Fiscus Law focuses on keeping the unwary from falling into wells,and while filling is one of the options listed for preventing this from happening, it says nothing about protecting groundwater quality from, pollution or contamination. That issue is dealt with in the application of U—N&O169ol YACs ` u"11 fifi 74=$1; prescrlWI "th'N116tI I W Nonetheless, anyone involved in the ground water field: driller, geologist, engineer,pump installer,supplier, should recognize that they have both a moral responsibility and a vested interest in seeing that abandoned wells are properly disposed of and in making their clients and the general public aware of the consequences of improper well abandonment. Next:: Destroying Abandoned Wells Page 11