Little heart well pipe.

[guywhofishes]

so it’s a certainty that it’s fox hills water?

also - I was talking generally - just happening upon a free flow ground water source

 

[guywhofishes]

https://www.usgs.gov/water-science-school/science/artesian-water-and-artesian-wells#overview

 

[Twitch]

Whenever we come across water elk hunting it goes through a filtration system or at the very least gets the steripen treatment. Giardia is bad voodoo

 

[ndlongshot]

where can i get well water tested in bismarck for drinkability?

 

[Allen]

so it’s a certainty that it’s fox hills water?

also - I was talking generally - just happening upon a free flow ground water source

No, but given the geographic setting for the Little Heart area by the Missouri, I'd say it's about a 90% chance it's completed in the Fox Hills formation.

It's tough to imagine how the surficial aquifers (e.g. the sands associated with the river's sediments) would generate artesian pressure. Not impossible, but quite unlikely.

If someone, let's say JuanR would report back on its taste and smell, that would help confirm if its Fox Hills. If it's completed in the sands associated with the Missouri River, it should also have some iron and manganese staining where the water is discharged. Much like one sees wherever there's a sand-point well used to water the lawns and sides of buildings down along Fox Island, etc.

 

[Allen]

where can i get well water tested in bismarck for drinkability?

https://www.hhs.nd.gov/Laboratory-services/water-testing

 

[Allen]

Whenever we come across water elk hunting it goes through a filtration system or at the very least gets the steripen treatment. Giardia is bad voodoo

Smart man. Giardia, while I've never had it, I've seen people get bed-ridden for days with it.

 

[1lessdog]

Smart man. Giardia, while I've never had it, I've seen people get bed-ridden for days with it.

Back in like 2005 we were Elk hunting NE of Steamboat Spring. We were camped about 5000 feet up. I was coming down the Devide trail on my 4 wheeler and ran into two guys hiking down the trail. I was about 5 or 6 miles from the trail head where they were hiking to. One had Giardia so bad he could hardly walk. And the other one was sick, but not as bad. They left everything in there camp, thinking the one was going to die if they didn't get help. I gave them a ride to the trail head and they went to Steamboat. I went back and broke camp for them and took everything to are camp. The one came and picked there stuff up 2 days later and the other on was still in the hospital. The one in the hospital had a vasectomy 3 days before they took off to go hunting. And was having issues with that along with giardia. It's not something you want to mess with.

 

[guywhofishes]

Back in like 2005 we were Elk hunting NE of Steamboat Spring. We were camped about 5000 feet up. I was coming down the Devide trail on my 4 wheeler and ran into two guys hiking down the trail. I was about 5 or 6 miles from the trail head where they were hiking to. One had Giardia so bad he could hardly walk. And the other one was sick, but not as bad. They left everything in there camp, thinking the one was going to die if they didn't get help. I gave them a ride to the trail head and they went to Steamboat. I went back and broke camp for them and took everything to are camp. The one came and picked there stuff up 2 days later and the other on was still in the hospital. The one in the hospital had a vasectomy 3 days before they took off to go hunting. And was having issues with that along with giardia. It's not something you want to mess with.

Good grief!!! TRIP FROM HELL

 

[Maddog]

I personally would have to be to the point of dehydration before I would drink out of a random water spout in the midst of nowhere.
Tap worms, and the bloody shits come to mind.

bloody shits? (is this spoken with a British accent?)

 

[Rowdie]

What a SCUMBAG

 

[Walleye Slayer]

Whenever we come across water elk hunting it goes through a filtration system or at the very least gets the steripen treatment. Giardia is bad voodoo

Giardia sucks. Got it on vacation in Costa Rica. Thank goodness you can buy meds over the counter down there to kill it. That was a rough week. I don't drink water unless its from a sealed bottle or has enough alcohol in it to kill whatever is in the water while on vacation anywhere. Not going taking that chance agian.

 

[Achucker]

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.

Is there a list of artesian wells that can be found somewhere. You said you ran across on in badlands. How would you know where it was coming from?