In 2018, the news reported a story about a man who fell into a mineshaft on his property. The incident took place near Aguila, Arizona, where 60-year-old John Waddell was descending his 100-foot vertical shaft. According to Waddell, his rigging broke about halfway down, and he fell to the bottom, breaking his leg.
With no way out and on his own, Waddell used a stick to create a splint and also had to fight off three rattlesnakes. After lying at the bottom of the shaft for three days, he was finally discovered by a friend and rescued.
Arizona Department of Water Resources
The Arizona Department of Water Resources had a field day with this one. According to the agency, in a strange comparison, abandoned water wells could pose the same risk. On their website, they referred to Mr. Waddell’s unfortunate event as the trigger for capping water wells around the state.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources wrote on their website:
“In one of the Department’s proudest success stories of the year, ADWR personnel took it upon themselves to organize an ‘Open Well Capping Workgroup’ following a news report about a western Maricopa County man falling into an open mine. Open wells, they concluded, could pose nearly as much of a hazard as open mines.”
In the summer of 2018, Arizona Department of Water Resources employees organized an Open Well Capping Workgroup to identify abandoned wells and persuade owners to temporarily cap them or properly abandon them.
According to the ADWR, they had 83 wells on file that individuals and ADWR employees identified. Collaborating with the Arizona Department of Corrections, inmates built and installed caps on a reported 80 percent of the documented abandoned wells. According to their press release, they had permanently capped 23 open wells and temporarily capped 43 open wells. Of the 83 abandoned wells on file, 14 were considered high priority, but it’s unclear if all 14 high-priority wells were capped.
In the same press release, ADWR wrote:
“ADWR recognized the need to address this hazard and coordinated a collaborative effort to cap wells, or have owners safely abandon them. The workgroup organized a comprehensive process to identify open wells, notify the well owners, and ensure that these hazards are properly capped or abandoned.”
The term “properly abandoned” is extensive and describes the process in which a well owner must plug the well using one of several methods that depend on the condition of the well lining, aquifer contamination, or whether or not the well still reaches the water table. This process requires well owners to hire drilling companies and spend thousands of dollars inspecting the lining and sealing the entire well with an approved cement grout mixture.
According to ADWR’s Well Abandonment Handbook, properly abandoning a well includes removing the entire well casing, filling the entire well with cement grout, and extending the cement plug at least two feet above the ground surface. In addition, if the well casing cannot be removed, the casing must be perforated twice every foot, and the well casing must be encapsulated in cement extending a minimum of 20 feet from the ground surface. In other words, simply welding a plate on the top is not a proper way to abandon a well. In fact, it’s likely to cause issues in the near future, and I’ll bet the caps are already rusting away.
These recommendations are based on the common-sense fact that runoff or other contaminants deposited directly into an underground aquifer through an abandoned well can contaminate the entire aquifer. Yet, the Arizona Department of Water Resources never followed their own protocol as recommended by their own Well Abandonment Handbook.
Hardly an Achievement at All
The Well Capping Workgroup didn’t scratch the surface in Arizona’s 223,562 wells that are tapping into our underground aquifers. Of the tens of thousands of wells, over 60,000 wells have no records. There are 20,630 wells used for irrigation, 117,438 wells for domestic use, 12,278 wells used for stock, and 34,601 used for monitoring water quality and water levels. Throughout the state, there are a total of 9,898 properly abandoned wells on record.
About a year after ADWR’s workgroup, the Colorado River Basin Drought Contingency Plan was signed into law and adopted by all upper and lower Colorado River basin states, including Arizona. It completely changed the way water is managed in Arizona. Among other things, it is forcing the Central Arizona Project (CAP) to stop delivering water to Arizona farmers. According to a phone interview with the Central Arizona Project, they will stop delivering water to Arizona farmers by 2025. This will force local farmers, who rely on CAP water from the Colorado River, to find other alternatives. As a result, many farmers will have no choice but to improve old wells or drill new ones.
Since the Drought Contingency Plan was signed by Arizona, nearly 30,000 well applications have been filed with the Arizona Department of Water Resources. That’s more than we have seen since the 1940s. Farmers are being forced to draw water from the underground aquifers as the Central Arizona Project now prioritizes water deliveries to Indian reservations. Meanwhile, the Central Arizona Project is pulling as much water as it can from the Colorado River.
On another note, it’s unfortunate Mr. Waddell became ADWR’s poster child. I hope that Mr. Waddell had a full recovery and is still hunting for the shiny.
