Using records of well completions to assess vulnerability of domestic wells in the Northeast U.S. to drought

Despite the presence of millions of domestic wells in the Northeastern U.S., there is little knowledge of the vulnerability of these wells to drought. To overcome a lack of reported data on domestic well failure in the Northeastern U.S., this study evaluated whether data from well completion reports could provide insight into the number of well failures occurring during drought. In particular, the study normalizes annual domestic well completions by the number of housing starts to differentiate wells completed to replace failed wells from wells completed due to new construction (as identified from U.S. Census data at the scale of Metropolitan Statistical Areas). The correspondence of elevated normalized well completions to drought was validated by comparing to U.S. Drought Monitor metrics and the occurrence of low water levels in U.S. Geological Survey groundwater monitoring wells. The analysis was completed for 17 regions in New England and New York since the year 2000, providing 261 region-years of data. Aggregated over all region-years, normalized well completions accurately predicted the presence or absence of drought as determined by the U.S. Drought Monitor 78% of the time, and the method had a Heidke skill score of 0.337. Similar results were obtained when drought was defined by changes in water depth in USGS wells. The method suggests that in the Northeast U.S., a region experiencing drought may see domestic well failures at a rate of one in a thousand wells, as an order of magnitude estimate.