Little heart well pipe.

[Sum1]

So there is an old well pipe sticking out of the ground in the little heart bottoms south of Mandan that has had water running out of it for as long as I can remembers. And I remember a guy I worked with about twenty years ago said he would drink out of it. I’m curious if anyone knows if that’s safe drinking water?

 

[1lessdog]

My guess is a Artesian well. I know where there are 5 of them. They flow year round. One of them are horses drank out of them like a water fountain at a school.

 

[Sum1]

Can humans drink out of it

 

[Sum1]

Serious question

 

[KDM]

Lots of cattle drink artesian well water. Deer drink artesian well water. Birds, etc. etc. etc. Never seen piles of dead cows, deer, or any other critter around an artesian well, nor have I heard of such a thing. People then eat said cows, deer, birds, etc. and I've heard nothing about negative affects. With that, I'd not go without my morning coffee because the water came from an artesian well. But what do I know?

 

[NDbowman]

I'd drink it. Probably cleaner and safer than treated city water with all the chlorine and crap in it. There are two wells like that a few miles north or me that run all year long, no one uses them anymore.
Dad had an abandoned farmstead on some of his land that the well would trickle over when not in use. There was a concrete pad that at one time had a cattle water fountain on it but had been removed. The water would flow out of the black plastic water line coming up out of the riser in that concrete pad. Deer and coyotes would use it in the winter. I always wanted to put a camera up by it and see what all used it. But a house got moved into that yard for my sister and in the process of landscaping and cleaning up the old yard, that water fountain pad got covered up with dirt. Old well got capped and a new well drilled.
We've got numerous shallow pasture wells for cattle, under 20ft deep. I drink water from them all the time in the summer, that water tastes better than about anything I've drank.

 

[Sum1]

hmmm. Maybe I’ll give a few swigs next time I’m down there

 

[wslayer]

The one at Crystal Springs use to run all the time too. We use to stop and fill water containers out of that many yrs ago. Very tasty water.

 

[1lessdog]

The one at Crystal Springs use to run all the time too. We use to stop and fill water containers out of that many yrs ago. Very tasty water.

There is a lot of difference between fresh spring water flowing out of the ground and artesian water. Artesian is very hard water. I remember kids back in the 60's having a rust deposit on there teeth growing up.

 

[Airwolf1972]

If it's artesian well you can drink it many farms had artesian water years ago, but if I remember right if you weren't used to it I wouldn't drink much of it or you'll get the shits from it. Just what I remember from the 70's and 80's

 

[Skeeter]

I drank artesian and spring fed water for 25 years and am still here to talk about. SW water or treated city water taste like dogshit compared to spring or artesian water. when I left the ranch and went to the Collage, I’d haul water with me because I couldn’t stand the taste of treated water.

 

[Allen]

Artesian simply means it is flowing out of the ground and no pumping is required.

A good fraction of the artesian wells in western ND are completed in the Fox Hills formation. It tends to be fairly saline, some of you might like the salty taste of it. It is also often high in fluoride and you will recognize people who grew up drinking it because they tend to have mottled teeth due to the excess fluoride.

If I remember correctly, trace metals can also be high in some Fox Hills wells, things like arsenic, selenium, and mercury.

FWIW, horses and cattle tolerate saline water better than humans. We tend to prefer our drinking water with up to about 300 mg/L of total dissolved solids (TDS) for taste reasons, once you get up to around 1500 mg/L (especially if it's sulfate based TDS) it can have a laxative effect on some people. Cattle can drink water in excess of 5,000 mg/L of TDS.

Not knowing this exact well, and not having found it on the ND Dept of Water Resources website, I'd probably not drink too much of it. That being said, during long strolls in the badlands on a warm November day, there have been times I was damn glad to run across an artesian well.

Anyway, I am going to guess this was installed for cattle, not human consumption. Which means the water quality and sanitary nature of it might be in question.

At one point, the town of Alexander had an artesian well right along the road going through town. My parents would always stop there to get "refreshed" when we would pass on through. I think they may have plugged that one a few years ago due to water quality/liability concerns.

If this is a true artesian well that's completed in the Fox Hills formation, it should get plugged if it's not being used. Artesian pressure is a finite resource. Back in the early 1900's, there were a lot of great artesian wells put into the Dakota Sandstone in eastern ND. People didn't restrict the flow and wasted the water only to eventually run out of pressure in some areas, and for the wells themselves to turn saline after they removed all the fresh water. If you live out east, that saline strip of land out by Kelly's Slough near Emerado is a great example of where the Dakota Sandstone seeps up to the ground surface.

Similarly, the West Fargo Aquifer was also at one time artesian by nature. It has had enough water removed from it to where it's generally no longer considered artesian at this point.

 

[BrokenBackJack]

Take a sample of it and send it to the State and have it tested.