BRASS has collected knowledgeable persons from around the area to be a "panel of experts" able to respond to your questions. So, send us a question about rivers, birds, fish, amphibians, mammals, weather, plants, invasive species, local history, farming, geology, toxins in stormwater, etc. by mail, phone or email (rulmer@co.essex.ny.us).
Q: I'm worried about the level of water in my well given the continuing drought. Does anyone have any information about current groundwater/aquifer levels?
A: (Stephen Flint from The Nature Conservancy, Anita Deming from Cornell, and assorted web sites and BRASS materials.) This should be fairly easy as long as a nearby well has been recently drilled. New York State passed a law in 1999 requiring well drillers to register annually with NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) before doing business anywhere in the State. Then, the driller is required to file all well reports with DEC and provide well owners with copies. Unfortunately, either there have been few wells drilled in the Boquet watershed in the last few years, or well drillers haven't been filing reports. Another source queried by BRASS was the newly created NYS Drought Task Force. However, the Task Force uses primarily precipitation data and anecdotal reports–reports such as whose private or community well has gone dry, but not how deep was the aquifer nor its storage capacity.
Aquifers differ by storage capacity, pumping capacity, and how close they are to the surface, which are all dependent site specific topography and soils:
A "low yield" aquifer (1-10 gal./minute) may supply only a house and are found in thin till formations with a lot of silt or clay. These recharge primarily by rainfall.
"Variable yield" aquifers (1-500 ga./minute) are located in rock formations such as limestone. They recharge from a larger area, but the pumping depends on the size of the fissures in the rocks.
"High yield" aquifers have enough water to supply a community, sustaining 10-100,000 gal./minute yield. Sand and gravel valleys are where they are found.
To begin to answer the question, site specific topography and soils information is needed along with yield.