The phone call would usually start with “My water smells like, looks like, feels like, stains like... HELP!” During my career with the private water program with the Department of Natural Resources, I answered numerous calls every day from homeowners, well drillers and plumbers about water quality and how to deal with the many problems encountered by the owners of small water supplies.

Now, there is a place to go online and get this information. The DNR has established “What’s Wrong with My Water,” a webpage designed to help anyone with a water quality issue to identify the problem and find a solution.

A Google search will reveal that the top pick is What’s Wrong with My Water, indicating how popular this site has become in the two short months it has been available. You can get there by going to the DNR webpage and entering “What’s Wrong with My Water” into the search area in the uppe...

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Treatment for iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) in your well water can be frustrating, complicated and expensive. Often, it’s more expensive than the cost of a well.

No other elements at such low levels in our water can have as much impact on our water supply, affecting the taste and ruining our laundry and our plumbing fixtures. Removing iron requires knowledge of water chemistry (the science) and how the well is constructed and used (the art).

For the rest of this article I will be referring to iron treatment only, as manganese treatment requires the same technology. However, the efficiency for manganese is far lower, requiring larger units, more maintenance and higher costs.

A water analysis and a period of observation of the water over time and during varying use is necessary. A complete water analysis must include tests for iron, manganese, hardness or total dissolved solids (TDS), and pH or acidity. To properly treat for iron, all of these values must be taken in...

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Are there orange, red or black spots on your laundry? Stained bathroom fixtures? Ugly-looking coffee? What about the infamous Northwoods metallic taste to the water? Yes to some or all of these?

It can all be blamed on naturally-occurring iron (Fe) and/or manganese (Mn) in our water. These two elements are the number one cause of esthetic water quality concerns in northern Wisconsin.

A little goes a long way for both iron and manganese. Iron will cause red or orange stains when the water contains as little as 0.3 mg/L, while manganese is even worse, causing black or brown stains at levels in the water over 50 ug/L.* 

Iron and manganese are two of the most common elements in the earth’s crust, and this pesky duo is very reactive in the environment, changing and moving in conditions we would consider normal.

When the acid rain falls (yes, even normal rain is acidic), the rain reacts with the soil as it moves into the groundwater. Add orga...

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Good news! The Headwaters area we live in is one of the most water-abundant areas of our planet. No matter where you are located, you will be able to install a well which will provide you with enough water to meet the needs of a home or small business.

Bad news! You will have to pay for it. The depth and cost of your well will depend on the soils and bedrock geology. In some parts of the Headwaters area a very shallow well is possible where right next door a very deep well is required.

Which will it be: slurping from a straw stuck into a snow cone or into a thick malt?

A well is pipe drilled, or driven, into the ground below the surface of the aquifer or the groundwater table. The geology below this level dictates the amount of water that can enter the well. In this sense, a well is like a straw you stick into a snow-cone or into a really thick malt.

If you put a straw into a snow cone, you can't suck the syrup out until you get to t...

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Septic systems are marvelous things! On average every day they receive more than 75 gallons per person of wastewater. They treat this waste by chemical, physical and biological processes and then allow the clarified water to seep into the ground.

A properly operating septic system keeps potential disease organisms below ground and out of our groundwater. However, does this mean “out of sight out of mind?”…in the words of John Wayne, “Not Hardly!”

Every septic system still allows for chemical contamination of the groundwater by various chemicals depending on what we flush or pour down the drain. All septic systems will leach chemicals into the groundwater, potentially our drinking water and into our surface waters.

Three of these chemicals—nitrates, phosphates and chlorides—are often used as indicators of septic contamination. The amount of nitrate in septic system waste is often more than 100 parts per million (mg/L or milligrams per liter), phosphates are often in...

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The title, a simple statement, seems obvious to anybody. However, it shows three things essential to public health practices through out the history of mankind: the need for a safe contaminant-free water supply, the fact that we produce waste which needs to be managed, and that waste contains the potential for causing illness, even death.

Without the knowledge of how to protect our water supply, the ability to manage our wastes and the potential for untreated waste to impact our health, modern society would not be possible. Today, no matter where we live we are still dependent on these same principles to protect our health.

What happens when we are the herd?

There’s one problem with the drink upstream statement: there is no upstream or downstream from the herd, because the herd is all around us and we are the herd.

In the late 1800s the relationship of disease to water contaminated by wastes became known. There was a cholera outbreak...

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When we turn on our faucet to take a drink, wash ourselves, water our lawns, just where does that water come from?

There are so many myths about water it would be impossible to list all of them. Here’s just a few I have seen: groundwater comes all the way from Canada, or even the north slope of Alaska, from an underground river, from when Mastodons walked the earth, from Lake Superior, or by magic!

The simple fact is, in northern Wisconsin—and in most of the state—we use groundwater as our source of water, and the majority of water we use fell as rain within sight of our well, or the municipality’s wells, if we live in town.

Your water is recycled…

Fresh water is the ultimate recycled material. All of the fresh water in the world fell as rain sometime in the past. The basis of this recycling is known as the “water cycle.”

Water evaporates from the oceans, lakes, rivers or streams or is transpired by plants and enters our atmo...

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