Clean wells left to chance

The state has more than 25,000 contaminated sites but no law to ensure wells are safe

More than 2 million North Carolinians drink water from private wells. Most of them have no idea how dangerous that can be. Jerry and Mary Price do.

Three years ago, the Prices discovered that their Wake County well had been polluted with a colorless liquid used in the manufacture of gasoline, insecticides and other products.

They learned that they should limit their showers to five minutes, that they should not drink water from their taps or cook with it -- and that their government had known for seven years about polluted wells nearby but hadn't warned them or their neighbors.

"I hope and pray that no one has developed cancer from this,'' said state Rep. Bernard Allen, a Beechwood Park neighbor whose well also was contaminated. "Some people have lived in the neighborhood for many, many years, and that's all the water that they've used. God forbid if that water was contaminated 25, 30 years ago."

After the pollution seeped into his neighborhood off Poole Road near the Neuse River, Allen tried to strengthen laws protecting private well owners. He wanted the state to require tests of private wells prior to sale or rental of property. And he wanted to require regulators to notify nearby property owners when they discovered contamination.

He failed. The bill he introduced last year, opposed by real estate interests because of the cost, didn't get a hearing. Well owners still aren't told of nearby well contamination, and North Carolinians continue to drink water from private wells that are seldom, if ever, tested.

The state requires vehicle owners to get their cars and trucks inspected annually to make sure the horn honks and other equipment does what it's supposed to. It regulates sewage disposal. But at least three attempts during the past 15 years to require even minimal testing of private wells have been defeated.

Private well pollution is not just a problem in rural counties. About 93,000 residents of Wake County get water from private wells, and 650 to 700 new wells are drilled in the county each year. Greg Bright, Wake's groundwater program supervisor, said most of the existing wells have never been tested.

"Just to make a wild guess, I'd probably say at least three-quarters of them have never been tested, and that may be conservative," he said.

The state started regulating well construction in 1972. But only eight employees have been assigned to enforce those regulations statewide.

"I can assure you that the state of North Carolina doesn't have sufficient staff to go out and actually check wells for construction," said Hope Taylor-Guevara, executive director of Clean Water for North Carolina, an environmental group that supported Allen's bill.

Five years ago, the state agency responsible for protecting groundwater asked to hire nine more people and to help more counties start programs to regulate wells. But it was a tough budget year, and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources said no. Gov. Mike Easley never saw the request; nor did legislators, who make the final decision. The agency has not tried again.

Thirty-five counties have some sort of construction oversight or well-testing program, but only 14 require even minimal tests. In the other 65 counties, well drillers are on the honor system when it comes to construction standards.

"That's like putting up speed limits but not setting anything up to regulate drivers," said B.K. Jones, a former Richmond County environmental health supervisor responsible for well inspections. "If we knew there was no Highway Patrol, how many of us would drive at 65 miles per hour?"