More Past Projects

Career has seen a variety of water well jobs.

By Ed Butts, PE, CPI

To my mind, I have had a successful career, not from making a ton of money or being able to design the next important engineering landmark—I didn’t do either—but because I have enjoyed two careers.

The first was six years of constructing and servicing water wells and pumping systems, with the second using what I learned during those six years and applying it to well and water system engineering and designs.

Throughout the past 45 years, I was offered and accepted a progressively greater role in the design, construction, and management of water well, pumping, and water systems. Obviously, a considerable amount of these efforts was predicated on my prior field experience in addition to the training and mentoring I received from many excellent engineers and well drillers.

I have constructed, designed, or been the project manager on approximately 250 water well projects to date. These projects included new wells for domestic, irrigation, municipal, commercial, and industrial use in unconsolidated and consolidated formations.

The applications were as diverse as municipal water supply, water for blending with landfill leachate, geothermal, dewatering, fire protection, food processing, and aquifer storage and recovery and have also included numerous and diverse rehabilitation procedures and well tests.

I was a snot-nosed kid when I began my career in 1974 with an inherited passion to work with water wells and pumping systems. I worked alongside and learned from some of the most talented, experienced, and knowledgeable water well drillers and pumpmen in Oregon, one of whom was my father.

As we close 2025, I want to relate some of the more unusual, good, and not so good water well designs and projects of my career.

The Alaska Days

One of the most important periods during my career (and life as it turns out) was a short six-month stint my girlfriend (now wife of 47 years) and I spent in 1978 in Anchorage, Alaska. Although the brief detour turned out to be a risk with financial failure for us, it was also a rewarding experience, as I was lucky enough to convince my girlfriend to marry me, and have an educational interlude I never would have experienced had we remained in Oregon.

Although my four years of experience up until then had primarily consisted of domestic and irrigation wells and pumps, I had little exposure to other sizes and types of water systems. During my time in Alaska I constructed three commercial wells, installed and serviced various types of municipal and commercial water systems, learned more about pitless adapters, well screens, control valves, chlorination, and chemical feed systems, and had my first genuine exposure to telemetry (SCADA) systems.

Some of the formations I encountered in Alaska were completely different than I had previously been exposed to in Oregon as well, including heaving sands and permafrost.

This may sound like a lot of work for just six months, but remember the length of sunlight in Alaska during the summer months averages 17 hours to 19 hours per day. Consequently, as someone already used to working until dusk and with my jobsites frequently 60 miles away from home, I often worked up to 18 hours a day.

By the time we returned to Oregon, and I rejoined Stettler Supply Co., I was ready to convince my employer to branch out into the municipal and commercial markets, which I headed.

One of the most unusual stories that came from this time is the fact we drove the then largely unpaved 2500-mile Alcan Highway both ways in a beat-up 1972 VW Beetle with a defective starter that required parking on a slope and push starting it each day. Ah, youth!

“Now What Do We Do?”

Although I was exposed to well drilling at an early age, my full-time exposure to water wells began in 1974 and continues uninterrupted to this day. My earliest days of well design were primarily dedicated to domestic and irrigation wells. As I previously indicated, most of the domestic and irrigation wells in our region largely use perforated well casings in unconsolidated formations and open but often lined wells in consolidated (basalt) aquifers.

The experience I gained during my earlier days proved to be invaluable once I started working with municipal and industrial wells as the primary differences were scale, the use of well screens and filter packs, and the never-ending paperwork.

One of my most unusual wells occurred in 1982. I had designed and was managing a new 12-inch municipal well for a local city. The driller had progressed through the expected clays, sand, and gravel without any problems to a depth of 212 feet on a well expected to end at 250 feet—when I received an urgent telephone call with the driller excitedly telling me, “You had better get out here!”

Although my office was only a few miles from the drill site, my mind raced with the urgency of his call and his obvious nervousness. When I reached the site and turned into the parking lot, I instantly saw the problem. Instead of the familiar gray and brown drill cuttings lying on the ground, it was saturated with a bright blood-red fluid.

The driller had permeated a layer of red cinders, somewhat common to Eastern Oregon, but almost unheard of in Western Oregon, particularly at this depth. As we stood next to the drill rig, we were both shocked while marveling at this totally unexpected event. The color of the bailed fluid was literally blood red!

The driller then uttered the words, “Now what do we do?”

I decided to proceed through the cinders to determine if it was a small lens or an extensive formation. The driller proceeded to extend the well another 20 feet to 232 feet, where the red cinders were still present. As we had no idea how much farther this unusual formation might extend and my concern with the impact of water running through this formation, I decided to backfill the well to 210 feet and screen only the upper formations.

Fortunately, there was sufficient sand and gravel overlying the cinders to permit successful completion of a 600 GPM well, 20% higher than the target capacity of 500 GPM. It is a well that is still reliably functioning to this day.

Hanging from the Tailpipe

Another interesting project involved the rescue of a well I neither designed nor was involved with the construction. I received a radio call from one of our pump crews on a routine pump pull in 1995. The pump was a vertical turbine pump used to supply water to the cooling towers of our local garbage burn plant.

The foreman relayed to me they had pulled the pump and cleared the bowls from the well, but with a long cylindrical well screen attached to it. Recognizing this was far from normal, I told our foreman to stop all work, jumped into my truck, and drove the 5 miles to the well site.

Upon arrival I could readily see he was right: a 20-foot-long well screen was literally hanging from the bowl assembly’s tailpipe. Apparently to gain additional submergence, the original installer had attached a 10-foot tailpipe to the bowl assembly and lowered it into the screen.

The problem was this was an 8-inch tailpipe and suction strainer placed inside of a 10-inch telescoping well screen. The 8⅝-inch ID of the well screen virtually matched the OD of the tailpipe and suction strainer; thus, all it took was some time and pumping of gravel to lock the screen to the pipe.

Although I was amazed at the ease we were able to pull a conceivably aquifer locked-in well screen from the well, I also knew we had to find a quick way to reinstall it. After consulting and explaining the situation with the plant manager and engineer, we received authorization to do whatever was necessary to get the well working.

The first task was to visually examine the wellbore using a downhole video camera. To our amazement, the now open, screened interval of the well remained open. There was no collapse of the formation, and you could easily see the loose gravel and impressions of the rods and screen wire where the well screen once inhabited. Apparently, the sand and gravel had been so cemented and underdeveloped that the well screen simply slid out of its former 22-year home.

Mike Waldroop, a well driller I worked with for more than 30 years, and I soon developed a two-step game plan. First, we wanted to reinstall the well screen before the borehole had a chance to collapse, making the reinstallation much more time- and labor-consuming. Second, we felt we must also employ the methods necessary to lock in the well screen to the formation and fully develop the well.

Reinstalling the well screen was a simple matter of lowering the screen into the wellbore using a customized left-hand threaded top connection to enable disconnection from the screen. We opted to use this rather than a bail bottom in case we had to apply some minor downforce or rotation to maneuver the screen past any tight sections. Plus, we needed the ability to retrieve the screen in case things totally went wrong. Fortunately, our fears were unfounded as the 20-foot-long well screen easily fit back into its designated place.

We then implemented a combination of surge blocking and jetting procedures to loosen and collapse the borehole material against the screen face, followed by a redevelopment of the screen. We believe this was successful as the development process rendered significant volumes of formation material.

The well produced the target capacity of 800 GPM of sandfree water and it and the well pump were ultimately returned to service within 10 working days.

Battling Contaminants

Figure 1. Example of 12-inch replacement well.

A common aspect of my well design experience is construction, revisions, or replacement of a well to preclude regulated or unregulated contaminants. This has included aesthetic contaminants such as iron, manganese, hardness, hydrogen sulfide, and sand along with numerous regulated contaminants
including many of the volatile or synthetic organic contaminants and inorganic contaminants.

Two we had to deal with several times were arsenic or nitrates. Arsenic became a significant issue following the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s lowering the Final Arsenic Rule in 2001 to 10 parts per billion (10 ppb) from the former standard of 20 ppb.

This had the immediate impact of needing to deal with excessive arsenic levels for several of my clients who obtained water with arsenic concentrations between the two levels. Some were dealt with through anion filtration while others used the redrilling of wells to seek water from an alternate aquifer.

Figure 2. A 12-inch production well in Memphis Sand aquifer.

An example involving a nitrate problem consisted of a 16- inch × 330-foot municipal water supply well originally drilled in 1980 and test pumped at 2000 GPM. Although the well was screened from 160 feet to 325 feet to optimize production, it was sealed to only 25 feet and gravel packed from the top to the bottom of the well. This had the effect of exposing the pumping well to shallower water trickling downward through the gravel pack and screen.

This level of higher-situated water was known to be used for agricultural uses and seasonally contained excessive levels of nitrates. Nitrate levels would often rise to 14-15 mg/L during the high-demand summer months, exceeding the EPA maximum level of 10 mg/L and necessitating the shutdown and loss of the well during these periods.

Although it was known that reconstruction to seal off the higher water would likely result in a proportional loss of yield, the inability to use the well during the high-use months and uncertainty of nitrate levels throughout the year were regarded as the primary concerns.

The revised well was designed as a 12-inch well for the anticipated yield of 1200 GPM drilled in 2006 and placed about 75 feet from the existing well. To avoid migration of nitrates between the wells, the new well was planned to approximately match the original depth of 330 feet, screened between an interval of 175 feet to 325 feet, but cement sealed to 150 feet to shut off the upper nitrate-laden water while being gravel packed and developed between 180 feet to 320 feet (Figure 1).

In addition, the existing well was entirely abandoned to avoid possible cross-contamination of nitrates between the wellbores. Although due to the loss of the upper water the predicted loss of 40% to 50% of the original production rate was realized, the replacement project delivered on the ultimate goal of precluding water containing excessive levels of nitrates. Since the well’s activation in 2006, nitrate levels have consistently been below 1 mg/L year-round, well below the maximum contaminant level of 10 mg/L.

Smooth Consulting Relationship

Figure 3. Aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) well workover.

I’ve had the privilege to consult or provide design services on water well and pumping projects throughout the United States. This has afforded the opportunity to work on projects with various types of geologic and aquifer formations I would not have normally encountered in Oregon.

Among others, these have included consulting on wells in unusual unconsolidated and consolidated formations in upper state New York, rehabilitation of a well in the Ogallala aquifer in northern Texas, consulting on a series of dunal wells in Florida, and construction of wells in very fine sands in Tennessee.

The project in Tennessee involved the design of two new replacement and supplementary production wells and pumping plants for a large food processor. The wells permeated the Memphis Sand aquifer, conceptually a very productive aquifer but prone to underperforming or sand heaving, infiltration, and pumping if not carefully screened, filter packed, and developed.

These wells were cases where I had experience through my background in Alaska, although I relied heavily on a local well driller’s expertise and recommendations with wells in this specific formation.

Each initial borehole was drilled with a reverse rotary as an 18-inch uniform diameter borehole from the surface to a termination depth of 280 feet below ground surface. Sixty (60) feet of 8-inch, 20-slot pipe size well screen was placed between 220 feet to 280 feet, including 5 feet of tight wind screen for a sump. Thereafter, the 18-inch × 8-inch annulus was progressively filled with 10-20 sand from 180 feet to 280 feet to provide a reserve in case settling or displacement of the filter pack occurred.

Each well was carefully and methodically packed and developed in short intervals to provide a complete filter pack. The interval between 180 feet to the surface was cased with 12-inch steel well casing and cement grouted to provide a sanitary seal (Figure 2).

After development and a program of step and constant rate test pumping, each well produced the design yield of 1000 GPM sand-free water. Consideration was given towards placement of sand feed tubes, but the driller’s local history with similar wells indicated that using a reserve filter pack and implementing complete development would render this unnecessary. Each well was subsequently equipped with a 100 HP vertical turbine pump operated by variable frequency drives.

This example illustrates how a local well driller working with an unfamiliar and out-of-state consulting engineer can mutually deliver a successful outcome to the client, with each party receiving commensurate credit.

Aiding the Change

My career has afforded me the opportunity to work on several unusual projects including groundwater remediation, dewatering, geothermal, and various aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) projects.

These have included projects in multiple states where I was only responsible for the pumping and injection components of the project to those in which I had responsibility for the entire project, including well revisions to comply with state regulations. Figure 3 illustrates a well workover and liner installation
modification using a cable tool rig for an ASR retrofit project on an existing well in Baker City, Oregon.

Much of my consulting work has been associated with the proposed or actual conversion of an existing irrigation well to municipal or other potable public water supply use. This has become more common in recent years due to prohibitions on new water rights and critical groundwater-limited area restrictions along with the increased conversion from irrigated land to dryland farming, resulting in the often lucrative sale of water rights from farmers to municipalities and other public water supply systems.

This not only requires a “Change of Permitted Use” water rights transfer in Oregon, but verification that the well construction complies with current Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD) and Health Authority well construction rules.

This is often a significant problem, particularly when converting an older irrigation well to municipal uses with perforated well casing, improper construction, or inadequate setbacks. Other issues that often arise deal with the material type, diameter, and depth of the sanitary seal and commingling of water between an unconsolidated formation like sand and gravel and a consolidated formation such as basalt.

For decades this type of well construction was permitted and even encouraged, especially with irrigation wells, as combining the production from two aquifers was often needed to produce the desired yield. However, the OWRD modified the well construction rules in 1978 to ban commingling or the exchange of water from aquifers with disparate heads or differing geologic units.

During consideration of a modified use, assuming there were no specific water rights or interference issues, this would often result in initial isolation testing of the two aquifers for yield and water quality to determine which aquifer was most favorable for use.

Thereafter, side-drilling, resealing, packers, liners, and cementing of the inferior unit would generally occur. If converting a well was deemed uneconomical or impractical due to excessive cost or unreasonable technical or construction issues, the existing well was often abandoned with a new well planned and constructed to select the appropriate aquifer. I have been involved in around 15 of these conversions over the years.

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As this past year has been mostly dedicated to examining the many updates, changes, and improvements to technology and methods in the groundwater industry during the past 50 years, next year we will take a detour and be focused on the last word of the column name: Business.

The columns will include subjects such as project estimating, protecting profit over loss, asset management techniques, as well as the keys to proposing, developing, and managing a successful project. We’ll begin the year by focusing on ethics.

I would like to wish all of you a safe, happy, and sane holiday season! As always, work safe and smart.

Ed Butts, PE, CPI, is the chief engineer at 4B Engineering & Consulting, Salem, Oregon. He has more than 40 years of experience in the water well business, specializing in engineering and business management. He can be reached at epbpe@juno.com.