WellnTel - Changing the Way to Look at Groundwater Monitoring

Hydrogeology, Geology, & Environmental Issues / Field Methods & Procedures

Date posted: 09/04/16

More than 44 million Americans depend on a private well for their water. Drought conditions and overuse have caused ground water levels to drop all over the country. If a homeowner has a well that is not deep enough, they may have to drill a deeper one or find water elsewhere, an expensive and troubling proposition. The Journal Nature recently reported that globally, groundwater sources are stressed at 3.5 times their capacity to produce, and the New York Times reported that wells are running dry around the U.S. Midwest. Meanwhile, most people with wells have no idea if the water in their wells is dropping, rising, or staying the same. But stress on groundwater does not just affect the homeowner. A lack of information is risky to communities too. Water stress is a drag on property values and impacts the tax base. So well water information is vital. But almost nobody has it. Until now, water levels have been measured by experts, contractors, inspectors or geoscientists, using special tools and costly equipment. Since nobody can afford to open a well and test it every day, the information that is collected in these events in obsolete almost as soon as it is gathered. Wellntel is a groundwater information system. With Wellntel, well owners can monitor current water levels, water levels over time, when pumping, and the information can be compared to previous periods and other factors like rainfall. Wellntel is not a traditional water-level sensor. Wellntel is a sensor, a communication gateway, and a collection of information about groundwater from one or more sensors or many other related sources, available securely to customers, anywhere, via this website, email, text messages, and smartphones. Unlike conventional logging water-measurement equipment, the Wellntel sensor does not calculate or store data at the well. If, for example, someone tampers with a Wellntel sensor (unlikely, since it is tamper proof), they get nothing. .