COMMON
QUESTIONS &
ANSWERS
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Volume 3, Number 2 (October 1998)
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Q: |
What is the latest information
on Well H? |
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A: |
Well H no longer serves
as a monitoring point and has been plugged and abandoned. In
early June, a special down-hole camera revealed two large holes
(baseball-sized) in the well—one 30 feet below the surface
and the other 955 feet down. Acidic water and soil surrounding
the well had dissolved the outer cement grout and then eaten
away, or corroded, the steel-pipe casing which forms the well's
inside wall.
Before lowering the camera, crews blew high-pressure, high-volume
air into the well, and large quantities of rust and chunks of
bedrock and cement came up along with water. Within days after
these materials were cleared out, the well's water level rose
almost 6 feet, eventually stabilizing at a level 10 feet above
that of the Berkeley Pit. This rise is significant because unusually
low water levels had prompted the Well H tests. The build-up
of materials clogging the well helps to explain the artificially
low water-level readings of the past year.
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