Reaching and Improving Iowa's Private Wells

This guest blog comes from Gabriel E. Lade, Associate Professor of Economics at Macalester College in Minnesota. Lade, as well as researchers at Iowa State University, published ‘Improving Private Well Testing Programs: Experimental Evidence from Iowa’ in efforts to increase water quality monitoring at the local level. Importantly, their simple intervention worked. Read on to learn more.

Private well owners in Iowa may be at risk

Between 230,000 and 290,000 Iowans rely on a private well for their drinking water supply. Along with the Conservation Learning Group at Iowa State University and other former Cyclones, I led a large-scale study to learn whether these households were ensuring they are drinking clean water and what we can do about it if they are not. The results of this study are summarized in several reports, peer-reviewed publications, and news outlets. Here, I summarize our broad findings and discuss the implications for the health of rural communities in the state as well as policy options to help these communities.

Contamination risks in well water and public programs to support homeowners

Private wells draw groundwater into a home (Figure 1). However, homeowners should not take for granted that the water is safe for consumption. Many sources, including failed septic tanks, landfills, and fertilizer-rich agricultural lands, can contaminate groundwater. In Iowa, the primary pollutants the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) lists as potential concerns are bacteria like E.coli and fecal coliform, heavy metals like arsenic and manganese, nitrate, and (more recently) PFAS. Nitrate, the focus of our study, is an especially concerning contaminant in Iowa, given the state’s intensive agricultural production.

Unlike Iowans who get water from a public or rural water system, homeowners with private wells are entirely responsible for ensuring their water is fit for human consumption. Fortunately, Iowa has some of the most generous programs in the country to help these (mostly) rural homeowners out. The DNR provides free water quality testing. These tests can cost hundreds of dollars in other states. They also support homeowners to protect their well if their water quality is poor, including money for well assessment, reconstruction, and shock chlorination.

What are private well owners doing?

Previous research from the University of Iowa suggested that many households aren’t taking advantage of the state’s free water quality testing program. Starting in 2018, our team stepped in to better understand what these households were doing to protect themselves and how we could increase participation in the state’s private well testing program.

We had some troubling findings. Over 70 percent of households hadn’t tested their water quality in the last year, an important practice since contaminants like nitrate and bacteria can fluctuate from year to year. Of those households, 67 percent didn’t have a water filter capable of removing many important contaminants, including nitrate. Of those households, over 30 percent didn’t use any alternative drinking water sources like bottled water or filter their water. This suggests that upwards of 76,000 Iowans are drinking their well water straight from the tap without knowing whether it’s safe.

How can we improve testing among private well owners?

Our team tried to see if we could get households to test their water more. We sent nitrate test strips (much like the kinds of strips you can use to test your pool’s chlorine levels) along with information on the health risks of drinking nitrate-laden water and contact information for the county sanitarian where they could get a free well test. This simple intervention seems to have worked – households were far more likely to report having tested their drinking water after we sent them the test strip. They were also more likely to report using the state’s private well testing program.

Our findings suggest that information is a crucial barrier to participation in the state’s private well testing program. Annual testing is not front-of-mind for households. The problem is likely exacerbated by the fact that, for many contaminants, households’ water can taste, look, and smell fine yet be unsafe to drink.

The simplest takeaway from our study is that we need to increase awareness of the need for annual well testing and the resources available to households. We can’t stop there. For those households whose water is contaminated, we also need to ensure they are aware of how to remedy the situation and the support the state provides for them to do so.

Gabriel Lade is an associate professor of economics at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. He is an environmental economist. Much of his work studies the costs and benefits of water quality and biofuels policies. He received his Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Davis, and was an assistant professor of economics at Iowa State University from 2015 to 2019.