Artesian Water
Categories:
Soils, Fertilizers and Irrigation
I have a large tract of adobe soil, a black clay top soil. For about
five months in the year there is not sufficient water on the place. I
have sunk wells in different parts, but with very poor results, the
further we went down the drier and harder the soil got. What little
water we did obtain was unfit for domestic use. Can you give me an idea
as to what might be the result of an artesian well in such soil?
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Artesian water has nothing to do with the soils. It is a deeper
proposition than that. Artesian water comes from gravel strata overlaid
with impervious layers of rock or clay in such a way that water in the
gravel is under pressure because the gravel leads up and away to some
point where water is poured into it by rain falling or snow melting on
mountain or high plateau. As the water cannot get out of this gravel
until you punch a hole in its lid, its effort will be to shoot up to
something less than the elevation at which it gained entrance to this
gravel - as soon as your puncture gives it a chance. Geologists who know
the locality may be able to tell you that you have little or no chance,
but no one can tell you whether you have a good chance or not until he
has tested the matter by boring. The quality of the artesian water is
determined by its distant source and the bad water you have found is
therefore no indication of the quality of what may be below it. No one
should enter an artesian undertaking, except to tap a stratum of known
depth, without a long purse. Probably one in a thousand of the bores
made into the crust of the earth yields as many gallons of artesian
water as gallons of various liquids used in boring it - and yet some of
them are good wells to pump from because they pierce other strata
carrying water, but not under pressure causing it to rise.