Well Water.....Pesticide Contamination? (house, purchasing, move)

[jeannie216]

Hi everyone,

I know there are more pressing issues going on right now in the forum, and I apologize, but I really could use some personal opinions concerning well water consumption.I recently viewed a beautiful home in Johnston County and saw that it used well water. I was urged to do some research on it before purchasing and alerted to the possibility of pesticide contamination. Does anyone know if this could be a factor? If so, would home filtering take care of any type of pesticide threat? Thanks so much for any and all input! Jeannie

[tsmithgolf2000]

Is it a private well or community well? If it's a community well then it's run by a company like a Aqua Water and they periodically test the water and should send the results to all homeowners. If it's a private well you can take it and get it tested too.

[jeannie216]

I'm not sure but I'll check that out, thank you.

[MaimounaKande]

I don't have a well now, but did in the past. We had it tested periodically. On the flip side of well water is all the chlorine and chemicals used to clean our city tap water. I still drink tap water, but I'd feel better about tested well water any day of the week.

[lauren4521]

Jeannie,
I've known two people in my life who had issues with wells, so I suppose I'm a bit wary of them. And truthfully, if I'm spending over $200K for a home, I'd rather not have an extra headache.

I'd have preferred no septic either but in the areas we liked, it was all septic.

So for us, we decided to do septic ONLY if the house was new so we wouldn't inherit someone else's headache (and who knows how the previous owners maintained it).

Thing is, IF something goes wrong....iwth either....its not a inexpensive fix. We're talking tens of thousands of dollars. So that's why I personally avoided wells when house hunting.

Lauren

[steve54]

Originally Posted by jeannie216

Hi everyone,

I know there are more pressing issues going on right now in the forum, and I apologize, but I really could use some personal opinions concerning well water consumption.I recently viewed a beautiful home in Johnston County and saw that it used well water. I was urged to do some research on it before purchasing and alerted to the possibility of pesticide contamination. Does anyone know if this could be a factor? If so, would home filtering take care of any type of pesticide threat? Thanks so much for any and all input! Jeannie

From what I remember of geology any water that passes through various layers of rock etc to the depth of your well 300' maybe - will be pretty much filtered to pure state- anything that is in it is probably natural but may be undesireable ie excessive calcium etc

[helpfulgardener]

Remember that with a well you can do your own damage as well; pesticides like 2-4-D, a known carcinogen, are a regular part of weed and feed fertilizers, and in a 1991 EPA study, half of the wells tested (of thousands around the country) showed high nitrate levels (chemical fertilizers are salts and very water soluable). There are EPA warnings on high nitrate levels for pregnant women and small children, but it can't be great for any of us...

Lauren was worried about the septic...? I would rather be self accountable for my waste stream than pass it off to a government agency that may or may not handle it with environmental responsibility. We have become fearful of bacteria and microbes, despite our continued reliance on them to digest food, decay dead organisms, and make nutrients naturally available to plants (insted of the chemical model from above). We had best move away from our fascination with anti-bacterials (which are also starting to show up in trace amounts in our wells and public supplies) before they degrade the natural ecologies in both our internal and external worlds...