How safe is well water in Stamford? What are the general characteristics of the well water in Stamford?What problems are there with well water in Stamford? Should I really treat my water? And How? What are treatment types?What’s the problem with softeners?What about bacteria?Glossary of tests performed and what they mean.
What is a well and where does the water come from?
Wells are drilled through bedrock to an area where porous rock exists that will allow water to pass into the hole. A wider (6 to 8 inch) metal casing is dropped deep enough (usually 40 or more feet) to prevent surface water from entering the well by placing it into the bedrock. A pump is placed far enough above the bottom of the well as to not draw sand and sediment from the bottom. Modern wells can range in depth from 80 to 1500 feet. There are a few old working wells that are less than 80 feet deep. A modern well has a cap and seal above the level of the ground. Many older wells have a well pit, which is usually stone or cement lined, two to three feet in diameter and 5 to 20 feet deep. These well pits are not recommended as many times they are covered with ground water and are a source of contamination for the well. Only State licensed persons who follow specific regulations in how the well is constructed, sealed and far enough away from potential contamination may drill wells. Information on wells drilled in the last 30 years are on file with the Environmental Inspections Division of the Health Department.
The water for a well comes mostly from the land surrounding it. Soil, sand, gravel and rock all act as filters to clean the water as it percolates down to where the well draws. Rivers, lakes and septic systems all are reservoirs of water that will end up into a well. Rain will recharge those reservoirs. The area a well draws from can be very large depending on the yield and depth of a well. Check out the diagram for a picture of what we are talking about. All the minerals in a well come from the rocks in close proximity to the well.
Because glaciers, which created Long Island and the Sound, formed the area in which we live, the actual lay of the land will have little influence on the actual direction underground water flows. The under laying rocks slope from North to South and this is how the underground water flows.
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How safe is well water in Stamford?
Because there was no industrial development in the areas where wells exist, there are no major industrial chemicals present in ground to seriously affect the water quality.
There is one exception to this where a building contractor stored and cleaned the equipment for his business in a residential area. The wells affected by this negligence were identified and treated by the State Department of Environmental Protection in the early 1970’s.
An area of concern in the past was the Scofield town dump and salt dome. Careful investigation by the State Department of Environmental Protection showed no industrial chemicals coming from that site. There is a problem with salt (sodium chloride) in that area which shows up in some wells.
Naturally occurring manganese in the area has been found at significantly elevated levels in a few wells.
Naturally occurring radon has also been found at significantly elevated levels in a few wells.
MTBE has been found in trace amounts in well water since its introduction to as a gasoline additive. There have not been any levels of concern.
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What are the general characteristics of the well water in Stamford?
Well water in Stamford generally has low to moderate hardness (average value about 130 mg/L, with most of this being calcium carbonate), the pH is slightly below neutral (average value about 6.8) with about half having some aggressive tendency. Discoloration from iron or manganese affects about one third of the wells in Stamford. There is no natural occurring arsenic, copper or fluoride in the area. Sulfate, potassium and chloride levels are generally low (sulfate under 40 mg/L, potassium about 3 mg/L and chlorides about 70 mg/L), however chloride values are significantly increased (doubled and more) when a well is influenced by water softener backwash. Sodium may be found in elevated levels, particularly with water influenced with softener backwash. Most wells tested (80%) in the past 10 years have low levels of radon, but the average radon level in Stamford (9,600 picocurries/L) is still above the CT state average of 7,000 picocurries/L.
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What problems are there with well water in Stamford?
The primary issue in Stamford is the aggressive nature of the water. Low pH and lack of hardness in the water makes the water attack copper water pipes and create pinhole leaks in the piping. Only about 6 % of these wells showed the corrosion occurring, but the potential was there in 48 % of them. Some orange-brown or black-brown staining may occur to varying degrees in almost 66% of the wells in Stamford. Simple cartridge filters may treat 50% of these problems, but others are complicated by the presence of iron or sulfate bacteria and make these metals more difficult to treat. The Health Department does not recommend softeners to treat this problem, as there are more effective and environmentally safer methods available. Hard water is generally not a problem in this area, with only 16% of the wells showing levels considered hard. Although some poorly located wells (those within 50 feet of a roadway which does not have curbing or has drainage from the road washing over or pooling on top of the well) have been affected by winter road salting practices, most of wells with salt problems are influenced by their own or a neighbors’ softener backwashing into a septic system that is within 250 yards of a well, particularly if the septic is to the north of the well. Elevated levels of chloride exist in over 32% of the wells with most of these being the result of softener regeneration discharge.
This should not be of concern. Most of the problems are minor, requiring minimal maintenance and not costly to correct. Nearly 60% of the wells tested had no problems and provide good quality water. Only about 4% had more than 2 problems, requiring a complicated solution and 2.3% had problems serious enough to possibly affect health that required comprehensive solutions.
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Should I really treat my water? And How?
You see brown stains in the toilet, blue stains in the porcelain sinks, your pipes have pinhole leaks, strange odors are coming from the hot water tap, your bathtub tiles have white powdery streaks or your water suddenly looks dirty. What do you do?
First, you have your water tested, talk to people experienced with well water problems. Many problems are easy to correct and may not require any treatment at all (an example is with the hot water having smells, where increasing the temperature of the water to just over 130 F solves the problem).
While the State of Connecticut does not regulate water treatment equipment nor do they license persons who sell such equipment, there are persons who may sell treatment devices and are knowledgeable on well water issues who are under State of Connecticut oversight in the work that they do and carry State licenses. These are plumbers, well persons, professional engineers and sanitarians.
While simple test kits may give some indication of water quality, they are not a substitute for testing by a State certified lab.
We offer independent testing and will guide you into the kind of treatment that will work best for the water problems you are experiencing.
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Treatment Types
There are so many, that we may not describe them all, but is a general idea…
Device description |
Sub type |
Best use |
Chemicals added |
Chemical feeders |
Pre treatment |
Precipitates dissolved material Neutralize odors Kills iron bacteria |
Chlorine Ozone |
Add liquid neutralizing chemical |
Neutralize pH |
Sodium, potassium or calcium hydroxide, carbonate or bicarbonate, a poly-phosphate, or acetic or citric acid. |
Limestone bed |
Calcium carbonate |
Mechanical filters |
Simple use paper, cloth or ceramic filters |
Clear large particles from cloudy water, iron, dirt and sand |
None |
|
Complicated use a sand bed or “micron sized” filters |
Clear all particles from cloudy water, iron, manganese, dirt and sand |
Ion exchange |
Softeners |
Hard water –also used for dissolved iron and manganese, but not recommended |
Salts |
|
Green-sand filters |
Iron and manganese |
Potassium permanganate |
|
Cation exchange |
Neutralize pH, tannins, color |
Various salts and acids |
Adsorption filters |
Carbon |
Odors, hydrocarbons, VOCs, pesticides and radon |
None |
|
Aggregate filters |
Iron manganese |
Reverse Osmosis |
|
Salts, heavy metals, and nitrates |
None |
Aeration |
|
Radon, odors and an initial treatment for iron and manganese |
None |
Distillation |
|
Heavy metals, nitrates, high dissolved solids and salts |
None |
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What’s the problem with softeners?
A softener is an ion exchange cartridge that uses either sodium or potassium to replace with calcium or magnesium in water, the minerals that cause hardness. Calcium carbonate is the primary component of hardness, but magnesium carbonate and calcium or magnesium sulfate or also considered part of hardness. To regenerate the ion exchange media of the cartridge, salt water (in the form of sodium or potassium chloride) is passed over the media in a high concentration (salt brine) to remove the calcium and magnesium and reestablish the ions in the media. The salt brine solution is the discarded. The most common method of discarding this salt brine is by discharging it into the septic system as waste, even though the State of Connecticut Public Health Code specifically prohibits this.
The main problem with this method of disposal resides in the fact that salt does not degrade, does dissolve completely in water and so follows the water through all the natural treatment the earth has. This ends up in your or your neighbors well. The highest levels of chloride contaminations that the Health Department Laboratory has documented, can be directly linked to the discharge coming from either their own or a neighbors’ softener. These levels were high enough as to make the water un-drinkable (thousands of milligrams per liter) and because chloride in high concentrations is a corrosive chemical, the persons with this problem experienced significant corrosion of the copper water pipes. The only treatment available for salt problems is reverse osmosis and the units that are generally available for home owners treats only about 5 gallons of water a day. This is fine for providing drinking water, but does nothing to prevent the copper pipe corrosion. Even when the chloride levels are not so high as to make the water undrinkable, the average level is still twice what water not influenced by softener discharge is. There is good news in all of this, if the softener, which is causing the problem, is removed, there is a good chance that the salt levels will reduce significantly within a year or so.
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Wells are not considered a source of sterile water (because there are many organisms not harmful to humans that live underground), but constructed to draw from the underground sources that have filtered most of the contaminants from surface water. This filtering process is very efficient, removing most bacteria after 15 feet and even the various forms of nitrogen after 25 feet.
The test for potability checks for failures in the well seal and casing that would allow surface water into the well by checking for a group of bacteria called coliform. These bacteria are not necessarily disease causing organisms, but because they are common in surface soil and water, they are a good check on the integrity of the well.
The seals on the wells will deteriorate over time and allow surface water into the well and this happens in about 11% of the tests we have on record. Most of the time the contamination is not a major health concern and only requires a well person to kill what got in with chlorine and reseal the well. About 2% of the test performed came back with a serious health concern and only 0.03% (2 wells) required new wells.
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