WATER WELL DATA NOW AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC

East County New Service

July 17, 2015 (San Diego’s East County) – Want to know data on water well locations, levels, pumping rates and more?  Until now, this info was not available to the public. But now thanks to passage of Senate Bill 83, the reports are available by request through a Well Completion Report Request Form at the California Department of Water Resources at this site: http://www.water.ca.gov/groundwater/wells/well_completion_reports.cfm.

While privacy laws require that owners’ names and home addresses be blacked out, you can still get detailed location information.  The Department has a goal to make all 800,000-plus logs available on their website site free within a year, but short-term may charge a fee to process the well log request as the new law allows.

The Groundwater Resources Association announced the news in its Hydroflash newsletter.

Ted Johnson, GRA president, states, “GRA celebrates the passage of this law as it has been our push for years to make the logs publicly available. We know that in order to properly manage the groundwater resources of the State, information such as aquifer architecture, basin thickness, hydrogeologic properties, water levels, well locations and well construction must be known and should be made available to anyone studying the water resources of an area. And now it is.”