Efficiency in Well Records

One of the advantages of working with Kodiak drill crews is that we try to minimize the time spent on the job site, filling out the Provincial record that is required when groundwater monitoring wells are installed. That time savings reduces your drilling costs. Since drill crews – from any company – charge out at a substantial hourly rate, the savings can be appreciable.

But to give you that savings, we need your help. We’ll ask you for a scaled map of your drill site and the drill locations. We’ll ask you for contact details for the land owner, since that information must be entered on the well record. If we’ve drilled multiple wells, we can save you a lot of costs by recording them as a single cluster – but we need you to ask the property owner to provided a signed permission form. The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change – and Provincial law – requires that well records be filed, and we do our best to keep that cost to a minimum. When our office calls, asking whether you’ve filled out our drilling information package, we need your help. It’s because we’re trying to help you. For you, or your client, the help you give us is in filing the well record is like putting money in your pocket.

Draft Manual Available

Six years after being conceived, four years since the writing team began, and after one year on the desks of the legal team at the MOE, the much anticipated Best Management Practices Manual has been released for public comment.  This hefty tome checks in at 856 pages (plus legislation).  This document, Test Holes and Dewatering Wells: Requirements and Best Management Practices, sets out the MOE expectations when licenced well drillers are installing groundwater monitoring wells, including those for geotechnical and environmental site assessment purposes.  When advising drillers how they would like their wells constructed, consultants should be familiar with the MOE recommended best management practices.  Although the comment period for the draft is now closed, you can access the information by clicking MOE BMPs for Wells.

Guidelines for Well Drawing

As you are likely aware, when monitoring wells are installed by Kodiak, a well record is filed with the Ministry of Environment (MOE).  Included with the record is a drawing showing the location of the installed wells.  We have provided below, some guidelines to help you prepare drawings that are consistent with the MOE requirements.

Requirements

• There must be two measurements for each well, including a measurement from the well to a known feature.
• Features for well measurements that the MOE considers acceptable include 1) edge of street, 2) property line, 3) rail line, 4) river bank, 5) Lot/concession.  The measurement can not be to another well.  Features for measurements should be permanent, with curved features being avoided.
• Orientation of the features used for measurements is important – they should each be perpendicular to each other (see our examples below).

Plan and Draw

• Include a north arrow.
• Include streets, property lines, well symbols, dimension lines, street names, well labels, property numbers.
• Dimensions should be in metres.
• Indicate which well has the tag.

Kodiak Simplifies Well Records

If we are installing monitoring wells or piezometers at your drill site, we are required to submit water well record to the MOE promptly after completing the drilling.  Our drill crew will present your field personnel with a “Monitoring Well Information Package” at the beginning of the day.  Ideally, your field personnel can fill out the entire package, including the site specific information (including the site drawing) on the day of the drilling, and provide our crew with the forms at the end of the day.  If necessary, you can return the forms to us within a few days after the drilling. It should be noted that if more than one monitoring well is being installed, we can file one record (“cluster record”) for all wells, if we have the property owners permission; we will provide a form for you to obtain that permission. Having your staff complete this will allow our drill crew to focus on the drilling tasks and complete the field work in a more timely manner.

If you have any questions regarding the forms, please contact our offices.  A pdf copy of the package can be found by clicking here.

Feature Article

If you could save your client several hundred dollars on a drilling job by simply filling in a few forms, would you be interested?  That’s what we can do for you when we file a cluster record.

Well drilling in Ontario is regulated by Regulation 903 (the “Water Well Regulation”), made under the Ontario Water Resources Act.  With a few exceptions, the Regulation requires that well drillers submit a drilling record to the Ministry of Environment(MOE) for every well, regardless of whether it is for geotechnical, environmental or water supply purposes.  Identification tags must also be attached to the wells.  The paperwork to file the records takes time, as does tagging each well.  Multiply these steps by several wells drilled during a project (particularly if it has spanned several days) and the costs quickly add up.

Fortunately, the Regulation offers us an alternative – the opportunity to file a “Cluster Record”.  This is a single record, and single tag, which applies to a cluster of wells that are located on the same or adjacent property. A cluster record reduces the level of effort required for tagging and recording – and consequently, our costs.  One of the critical things we need in order to provide this cost savings is a signature from the owner(s) of the property(ies) on which the wells are installed.  Unfortunately, getting the property owner’s signature for well clusters is our most difficult task when filing well records.

When we arrive onsite, you will receive a package requesting several pieces of information that we use for filing the well record.  If your technician can provide that on the site, our crew can spend most of their time drilling, and at the end of the job, use only a short time to review the information that you have provided.  This reduces the amount of time we spend at the site, and reduces the costs to your client.  One of the items in the information package is a form to be signed by the owner of each property where one or more wells will be installed.

The signature is proof for the MOE that each property owner has been informed that there is a well on the property.  If you think the signature is not likely to be available, please tell us before we get to the job site.  In that case, the drill crew will simply tag each well and file a record for each – just as we did before cluster records became an option in the Regulation.  If you don’t tell us – until after the job is over – that the property owner’s signature will not be forthcoming, it means that we must send staff back to the job site to tag each well, and file multiple records – a time consuming and costly exercise that probably wasn’t in the original project budget.

The signature aspect of the cluster record seems like a nuisance, but there is some rationale behind it.  When wells are tagged individually, each property owner receives a copy of the well record in the mail.  When a cluster record is filed, only one property owner receives a copy of the well record – if there are multiple properties involved in the cluster, the other owners may never know that there are wells on their property.  By asking for signatures, the MOE ensures that all property owners are aware of wells on their own property.  A knowledgeable owner is more likely to protect and maintain the well.

Some consultants have simply signed the Owner’s Permission form themselves, acting on behalf of their client.  By doing so, they prevent the MOE from ensuring that the property owner has been told of the well.  This practise has already been the grounds for at least one MOE staff visit to a consultant who, according to previously filed cluster records, appeared to be the owner of a large number of properties across Ontario!

If you can talk with your client in advance and get the owner’s authorization form signed, we will be able to file a cluster form and lower your project costs.  If you can’t get a signature – just let us know before the job, and our staff will be happy to help out by doing individual tagging and by coming prepared to your site with a sufficient number of tags for all the wells that might possibly be drilled.

More information about well tagging, record filing and Regulation 903 is available in our FAQ on the Water Well Regulation, located here:
Reg 903 FAQ