Joseph Ayotte found an old, unusual well on his farmland in New Hampshire more than two decades ago. It was a shallow cube three times the width of a typical hand-dug well.
He tweaked the design and had another one installed, adding a sanitary cap to keep out critters like rodents, frogs and snakes. The 10-foot by 10-foot well has been providing and storing plenty of good quality water for his home ever since — unlike his drilled bedrock well, which tested for high levels of arsenic.
The shallow well design, being researched and tested by state scientists on Maine farms, could provide the water storage and quality needed as drought seasons become more frequent. The patented design is 50 to 75 percent cheaper to install than a drilled bedrock well and is newly licensed for distribution.
Maine farmers typically don’t have water storage infrastructure because they haven’t historically needed it, but with droughts becoming common, researchers say it’s time to use more backups.
“It won’t work for everyone,” said Ayotte, who works as a supervisory hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey in its New England Water Science Center. “But it works in a lot of places.”
One thing that sets the well apart is the water source it uses. New England is rich in water and precipitation. In Maine, rainfall and melted snow percolate down to the glacial till aquifer, a water source in sediment that rests on the bedrock underlying the state. When it reaches the bedrock below, it fills the cracks that drilled wells pull water from.
Not much water is stored in bedrock, but wells drilled into it typically provide enough for household use.
The novel shallow well draws from the glacial till aquifer, stores more water, refills within a day or two and typically doesn’t have the naturally occurring arsenic found in many of New England’s drilled bedrock wells.
In 2023, well tests found arsenic above safe levels in every Maine county; the state estimates 1 in 10 wells here have unsafe arsenic levels. Arsenic exposure can cause numerous cancers and hinder child development, among other problems.
Getting clean water is a challenge in some areas, but for farmers, getting enough is a problem.
University of Maine professor Rachel Schattman has been leading tests of the design on Maine farms for several years as an option for water storage and supply during drought.
Climate models predict the wet springs and dry summers of recent years will likely continue, she said, but most Maine farms don’t have water storage capacity because they historically haven’t needed it.
“That means there’s some infrastructure that needs to be in place if agriculture is going to be profitable and consistent year to year,” Schattman said. “People also have some catching up to do.”
As water moves down through the soil, nitrates, E. coli and arsenic also will be filtered out, Schattman said.
Adding more bedrock wells to a farm is expensive, often starting at $40,000. The novel shallow well costs much less. If all the equipment were hired out, testing sites and digging a shallow well might run $15,000 to $25,000.
One of her early hopes was that the wells could be dug by hand. Having stared down 20 or 25 feet from the side of a test well, she cautioned against that for safety reasons, but there are still tens of thousands of dollars to be saved.
Ongoing research will reveal how the well can best be used in different conditions and fluctuations in the water table at different times of year. Schattman hopes to set up more trials across New England to narrow down recommendations for using them.
The well design will vary based on soil type and bedrock depth at different sites.
Drought is on Schattman’s mind as a legislative issue, too. She thinks the future of water use in Maine may change at the state level someday if shortages continue. Each state in the country regulates water access during drought differently.
Maine is one of the only states with “absolute dominion” laws, which means whoever owns land has the unrestricted right to use water beneath it. Most other states use “riparian rights,” which grants so-called reasonable use to landowners near a river or other source if it won’t have an impact on others downstream.
But things are changing around us. Vermont, for example, recently shifted away from absolute dominion to stricter rules. Schattman has no idea which way Maine will go, and any change might be contentious, but it is clear to many that conditions are changing.
Ayotte and Schattman both call the design another “tool in the toolbox” for farmers and landowners.
