Why an Abandoned Artesian Well Has to Be Plugged
An old artesian well that no longer serves a purpose isn't just sitting there harmlessly. A free-flowing or deteriorating well wastes water every day and can let poor-quality water move between aquifer layers, straight into the groundwater your neighbors drink. Brent Pump Works is a state licensed well drilling contractor, and we permanently plug and abandon artesian wells across the Treasure Coast, to state specifications, protecting both your property and the aquifer underneath it.
What Is an Artesian Well?
An artesian well is drilled into an aquifer where the underground water is under enough pressure to rise up inside the well on its own. When that pressure pushes water all the way to the surface without a pump, it's called a free-flowing well. Many of these wells were drilled decades ago for farming, livestock, or irrigation and have long since been forgotten. Left uncontrolled, they can flow continuously, day and night, for years.
The Problem with Uncontrolled Wells
- Water waste: A single free-flowing well can pour many thousands of gallons a day onto the ground for no purpose.
- Saltwater intrusion and aquifer mixing: Older free-flowing wells often reach a deeper part of the aquifer that can be higher in salinity. As the well casing corrodes, that saltier or poorer-quality water migrates upward into the fresher zones used for drinking water.
- Contamination pathway: A deteriorated or open well is a direct conduit for surface pollutants to reach the aquifer, bypassing the natural layers of soil and rock that would otherwise filter them.
- Safety: An open or uncapped well is a genuine hazard to people, pets, and livestock.
Properly plugging the well shuts all of that down at once.
Most owners come to this with four questions, and each one has a page of its own: whether you have to plug an abandoned well in the first place, what well abandonment costs and why it varies so much, how a well is plugged from the bottom up, and the well abandonment permits that have to be in place before any of it starts.
