National and regional trends in water-well drilling in the United States, 1964-84

By S.M. HINDALL and MICHAEL EBERLE

U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CIRCULAR 1029 DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR MANUEL LUJAN, JR., Secretary

Free on application to the Books and Open-File Reports Section, U.S. Geological Survey, Federal Center, Box 25425, Denver, CO 80225

Abstract 1 Introduction 1 Purpose and Scope 1 Sources of Data 2 The Water-Well Industry in the United States in 1984 2 Acknowledgments 3 Trends in Water-Well Drilling 3 National Trends 3 Regional Trends 10

Summary and Conclusions 14 References Cited 15

1. Map showing number of water wells drilled in the United States, by State and region, 1984 6
2. Map showing number of water wells drilled per 1,000 people, by State and region, 1984 7
3. Graph showing number of new private-housing units started and number of water wells drilled in 1960, 1964, and 1980-84 9
4. Graph showing number of water wells drilled in the United States from 1900 through 1984 and relation to major events in United States history 10
5. Map showing regional differences in the number of water wells drilled in the United States, 1964 and 1984 11
6. Map showing regional differences in the number of water wells drilled in the United States, 1980 and 1984 12
7. Estimated number of water wells drilled in the United States, by State, 1960, 1964, and 1980-84 4
8. Regional trends in water-well construction in the United States, 1960, 1964, and 1980-84 8
9. Regional trends in population in the United States, 1964, 1980, and 1984 13
10. Regional trends in new private-housing units authorized in the United States, 1980-84 14

Northeast Region 11 Southeast Region 12 Great Lakes and Central Appalachians Region 13 South-Central Region 13 Northern Rockies and Northern Great Plains Region 13 Southwest Region 13 Pacific Northwest Region 14

INTRODUCTION

Ground water, the source of about 40 percent of the water used in the United States exclusive of power generation (Heath, 1983, p. v), has received much attention in recent years as the value of this resource and its vulnerability to contamination have become increasingly apparent to the general public. Except for modest supplies derived from developed springs, driven wells, and hand-dug wells still in use in rural areas, virtually all of the ground water produced in the United States today is provided by drilled or bored wells.

Although information on water-well drilling activity may be of interest to the general reader, drilling-trend data are of particular importance in two fields:

National and regional water planning.- Information on the number of wells drilled annually provides a means of corroborating estimates of ground-water withdrawal, indicates changing patterns in water use, and highlights potential problems of supply and demand.

Water-related equipment marketing.- Technical advances during the 20th century have resulted in numerous products to improve water-well yield, reliability, sanitary quality, and ease of delivery to the point of use. Construction of domestic wells, for example, creates markets for water-system components such as well casing and screens; pumps and associated piping, valves, and electrical controls; pressure tanks; and water-treatment equipment. Construction of large public, industrial, and irrigation wells stimulates sales of correspondingly large water-handling machinery. Information on national and regional trends in drilling activity is of obvious value to water-equipment manufacturers and suppliers in analyzing and forecasting changes in their markets.

Despite the need for such information, no summary or interpretation of national and regional drilling data for the United States has been compiled or printed since the U.S. Geological Survey published a national report in 1966 based on data for 1960 and 1964 (Meyer and Wyrick, 1966).

Purpose and Scope

This report is intended only as a general review of data readily available at the time of study (1986). These data are of uneven quality and of limited detail- for example, the data cannot be used to distinguish between uses of wells (such as for homes, for irrigation, for industry, or for public-supply systems). The data are annual data, some of which are from widely separated years. Increases or decreases from one year to the next should not be interpreted as steady because significant annual fluctuations may have occurred in the intervening years. Exhaustive data collection and quantitative statistical analysis were beyond the scope of this investigation.

Sources of Data

The 1980-84 data presented in this report were compiled for the U.S. Geological Survey by the National Water Well Association (NWWA), a trade and professional organization for the water-well industry. NWWA maintains a State-by-State data file on water-well drilling in the United States. This file had its beginnings as an NWWA survey of the water-well industry in 1981 and is being updated annually.

The primary sources of information from which NWWA estimates the number of wells drilled annually are State agencies responsible for archiving drillers' logs and well-completion reports and for certifying or licensing drilling contractors and pump installers. Secondary data sources used by NWWA include State boards of health; State water-well associations; national trade organizations for related water industries; periodic surveys of NWWA members or readers of water-well industry magazines and newsletters; personal contacts with suppliers, manufacturers, and drillers; State and county agricultural extension agents; and reports on the construction industries by the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the Internal Revenue Service. Most of the data obtained from secondary sources are anecdotal or fragmentary but are useful in many cases for corroborating or supplementing data from the primary sources.

The estimates provided by NWWA for total wells drilled annually in each of the 50 States can be ranked into 3 levels of accuracy. At the highest level, State-agency officials believe that reporting requirements, and compliance with those requirements, are good enough to provide reasonably accurate estimates of the number of wells drilled; thus, for these States, primary-source data were used as is. At the next level, State-agency officials were able to estimate the total number of wells drilled from incomplete information available to them; for these States, primary-source data were corroborated or adjusted on the basis of secondary-source data. At the lowest level, State-agency officials had little or no information available on the number of wells drilled annually; hence, NWWA made estimates solely on the basis of secondary data sources. Approximately 85 percent of the 1980-84 data presented in this report were partially estimated by the source organization or NWWA staff. Of that 85 percent, NWWA believes that about 30 percent of the numbers are based entirely on secondary sources.

Most State agencies do not keep records of the types of wells (domestic, irrigation, industrial, and public supply) drilled annually; therefore, it was impossible to analyze primary-source data for trends by well-use type. Secondary-source data also were insufficient for analysis by well-use type.

The Water-Well Industry in the United States in 1984

Recent estimates from diverse sources indicate that approximately 8,000 water-well drilling contractors operated approximately 20,000 drilling rigs in the United States in 1984, as compared with 9,500 contractors who operated 27,000 rigs in 1964 (National Water Well Association, 1983, sees. V and VI). Although some of the apparent decline in number of firms and drill rigs may be a result of differences in estimation methods, the economic recession of the mid-1970's may well have forced several hundred drilling firms out of business because of the pronounced decrease in housing construction (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1986, p. 724-725). Subsequent peaks in drilling activity are more likely the result of increased amounts of work by surviving firms rather than the entrance of new firms into the industry, and it is reasonable to assume that the water-well-contractor work force as a whole has indeed declined somewhat (K.B. McCray, National Water Well Association, oral commun., 1986).

In 1984, these firms drilled an estimated 397,000 wells. The estimated average cost per well to customers was $2,600 (Water Well Journal, 1985, p. 48); hence, the total annual water-well drilling business earned in excess of $1 billion that year.

The small-business character of the industry has made estimates of water-well drilling activity difficult to obtain in past years. Although 10 percent of the industry (in 1980) consisted of large firms whose drilling-services sales exceeded $1 million, most water-well drilling firms were small businesses, many of which were family owned. Only about 37 percent of the firms in business in 1983 were corporations, 54 percent were sole proprietorships, and 9 percent were partnerships (Water Well Journal, 1985, p. 48). The average number of employees per firm was 6.4 in 1980 (McCray, 1982, p. 73).

The authors wish to express their appreciatiOn to Kevin B. McCray of the National Water Well Association for his advice and technical assistance in planning, providing data for, and reviewing this report. Gerald Meyer, Staff Scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey, served as an advisor for this publication.

Table 1 and figure 1 show the number of wells drilled, by State, in 1984. In general, most wells are drilled in States that have abundant ground-water supplies and large populations. Seven States account for 39 percent of all the wells drilled in 1984. Drilling was most intensive in Florida, where more than 45,600 wells accounted for 11 percent of the United States total in 1984. In decreasing order, the other six States that had the largest annual totals for 1984 were Texas, New York, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio. Six of these seven States also were the leaders in drilling activity in 1964.

Figure 2 shows the number of wells drilled in 1984 per unit of population; more than 3. 0 wells were drilled per 1,000 people in Alaska, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming. In 1984, the average number of wells drilled was 1.7 wells per 1,000 people; in 1964, 2.3 wells were drilled per 1,000 people. The fewer new wells per unit of population in 1964 than in 1984 may be attributable to a reported increase in the number of people and in the percentage of the total population served by community or public water-supply systems. In 1980, for example, public water supplies served about 186 million people or 81 percent of the population; in 1960, public systems served 136 million people or 75 percent of the population (Solley and others, 1983, p. 10; MacKichan and Kammerer, 1961, p. 7; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1986, p. 5).

The number of wells drilled annually in the United States from 1980 through 1984 (tables 1, 2) ranged from 336,000 (in 1982) to 397,000 (in 1984) and averaged 370,000. The national total of wells drilled in 1984 was 8.5 percent less than the national total drilled in 1964. National totals decreased from 1980-82, then increased from 1982-84; overall, 2.6 percent more wells were drilled in 1984 than in 1980 (tables 1, 2).

There are considerable differences in total wells drilled in 1964 and 1984 in several States (table 1). Totals in 1984 were greater by at least 80 percent than totals in 1964 for Alaska, Arizona, Louisiana, Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming. Totals in 1984 were at least 39 percent less than totals in 1964 for Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Totals in 1984 were at least 36 percent greater than totals in 1980 for Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Virginia, whereas totals in 1984 were at least 23 percent less than totals in 1980 for Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and South Dakota.

Because of the lack of continuous, reliable, and consistent data on water-well drilling activity for most of this century, it has been difficult to relate drilling trends to the condition of the Nation or to specific national events with any certainty. It generally is believed, however, that the water-well industry responds to the same national circumstances as the rest of the construction industry does. Factors that appear to be most influential on water-well drilling activity were considered in this study in an effort to explain the significance of these trends. These factors fall into three categories- natural phenomena such as droughts and earthquakes, population change, and housing starts.

Drought is the most obvious and the most common natural phenomenon that influences well-drilling activity. During periods of below-normal precipitation, water levels in surficial aquifers may decline to the point where shallow wells begin to go dry. Water-level declines due to drought generally spur drilling of domestic wells; shallow wells are deepened, or replacement wells are drilled to deeper waterbearing zones that are more resistant to the effects of below-normal precipitation.

Prolonged drought also can stimulate drilling of irrigation, industrial, and municipal wells. Because regional ground-water reservoirs generally are depleted more slowly than surface-water reservoirs, farmers and municipal and industrial water managers may supplement or replace their surface-water supplies with ground water after experiencing service interruptions caused by severe drought.

Droughts of greater or less severity occur in one place or another almost every year. Some of the more notable droughts in the United States from 1964 through 1984 occurred in the Northeast in the mid-1960's, in the Southwest in the early 1970's, and in the Northern Rockies and Great Plains in the late 1970's and early 1980's (Karl and Knight, 1985). The last major drought that affected a large part of the Nation during this period occurred from 1976 through 1977 and was felt in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, Northern Rockies and Northern Great Plains, and Great Lakes and Central Appalachians regions. Most of these droughts occurred between 1964 and 1980, a period for which very little drilling data are available, unfortunately. No conclusions could be drawn, and, until drilling data are available for a sufficient number of consecutive years to bracket a significant drought, a meaningful assessment of the effects of drought on drilling trends will not be feasible.

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Figure 3. Number of new private-housing units started and number of water wells drilled in 1960, 1964, and 1980-84 (data from U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1980, p. 787, and 1986, p. 725).

Figure 4. Number of water wells drilled in the United States from 1900 through 1984 and relation to major events in United States history (data prior to 1960 from Picton , 1956, and data for 1960 and 1964 from Meyer and Wyrick, 1966).

EXPLANATION EXPLANATION

wells drilled. Annual totals of wells drilled for the 1980-84 period ranged from 93,600 (in 1982) to 121,000 (in 1984) and averaged 107,000 (table 2). The 121,000 wells drilled in this region in 1984 were 30 percent of the United States total, and the average of 2.8 wells drilled in 1984 for every 1,000 people is also the largest of all the regions (fig. 2). Although the number of wells drilled in 1984 was 4 percent less than the number of wells drilled in 1964, the 1984 total was 19 percent greater than the total for 1980. The shift in population from the North to the "Sunbelt" and the availability of and dependence on ground water in the Southeast accounts for this recent drilling activity. In the 1980-84 period alone, the population of this region increased by 6.6 percent compared to a 4.2-percent increase nationally (table 3).

The number of wells drilled in the Great Lakes and Central Appalachians region in 1984 was 18 percent less than in 1964 and 4. 7 percent less than in 1980 (table 2). Annual totals of wells drilled for the 1980-84 period ranged from 87,900 (in 1982) to 106,000 (in 1980) and averaged 96,200. The region was hit particularly hard during the recent recession in both the agricultural and industrial sectors. Regional economic problems are further reflected in a 0.4-percent population growth for the 1980-84 period, the lowest of all the regions (table 3), and a fourth-place regional rank in new private-housing units authorized (table

4) despite a first-place regional rank in population.

The number of wells drilled in the South-central region was 18 percent less in 1984 than in 1964 but was virtually the same in 1984 and 1980 (table 2, figs. 5, 6). Annual totals of wells drilled for the 1980-84 period ranged from 57,300 (in 1983) to 63,300 (in 1984) and averaged 61,300 (table 2). In 1984, these 63,300 wells amounted to about 1.5 wells per 1,000 people (fig. 2). The unusually stable drilling activity with respect to other regions for 1980-84 can be at least partly attributed to unusual stability in the number of new private-housing units authorized in this region during that period (table 4); in fact, this was the only region for which 1982 was not the worst year for housing activity from 1980 through 1984.

The number of wells drilled in the Northern Rockies and Northern Great Plains region in 1984 was 32 percent less than in 1964 (table 2) and 26 percent less than in 1980 (table 2). Annual totals of wells drilled for the 1980-84 period ranged from 12,500 (in 1983) to 18,100 (in 1982) and averaged 15,700 (table 2). Although the number of wells drilled in the region in 1984 was small (only 13,300 or 3.3 percent of the United States total), the 2.5 wells drilled per 1,000 people was the second highest of the regional averages (fig. 2). This particular region, as well as the South-central region, experienced an agricultural economic recession over several years, which is reflected by 16 percent fewer new private-housing units authorized in 1984 than in 1980 (table 4). The drought of the early 1980's in the region was neither severe enough nor long enough to have any discernible effect on the number of wells drilled.

The Southwest region had the fewest wells drilled per 1,000 people of any region in the United States in 1984

D.C.) ...................

(about 0. 6). The total number of wells drilled in 1984 was 41 percent greater than in 1964 (table 2) but was 12 percent less than in 1980 (table 2). Annual totals of wells drilled for the 1980-84 period ranged from 14,800 (in 1983) to 20,700 (in 1980) and averaged 17,300 (table 2). This region experienced the largest population increase in terms of percentage and the third largest increase in terms of number of people of all regions from 1980 through 1984 (table 3); however, available well-drilling data did not reflect these increases, nor did drilling activity correlate particularly well with new private-housing units authorized. Peaks in drilling activity that are not reflected by available data may have occurred in this region in the 1970's.

The Pacific Northwest, which includes Alaska, had the fewest wells drilled in 1984 with slightly more than 10,000, only 2.6 percent of the United States total (table 2). The region also experienced the greatest variability in annual drilling activity. The total number of wells drilled in the Pacific Northwest in 1984 was 43 percent greater than in 1964 but was 31 percent less than in 1980. Annual totals of wells drilled for the 1980-84 period ranged from 8,670 (in 1983) to 15,000 (in 1980) and averaged 11,000 (table 2).

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Water-well drilling activity in the United States did not appear to increase or decrease significantly from the mid-1940's through the mid-1980's. The average annual total of new wells drilled during that period probably was about 400,000. The national total of wells drilled in 1984 was 8. 5 percent less than the total for 1964 but was 2. 6 percent greater than the total for 1980 (table 2). The number of wells drilled nationally per 1,000 people was 2. 3 in 1964 and 1.7 in 1984. This decrease is possibly the result of an increase in the percentage of the total population served by public water-supply systems between 1964 and 1984.

Seven States, Florida, Texas, New York, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio, accounted for 39 percent of all the wells drilled in the United States in 1984. Florida led the Nation in well-drilling activity with 45,600 wells. Drilling activity in the Southeast region dominated the Nation in 1984 with a total of 121,000 wells, which represents 30 percent of the national total. The Southwest region had the fewest wells drilled per 1,000 people in 1984 (about 0. 6), whereas the Southeast region had the most (about 2.8).

Data compiled for this study indicate that well-drilling activity in the United States is cyclic in nature and more closely follows patterns of economic activity, particularly housing starts, than patterns of population changes. Data are insufficient to indicate the effects of drought.

The apparent relation between housing starts and totals of wells drilled from 1980 through 1984 suggests that there may have been peaks in drilling activity in 1972 and during 1977-78 that are not represented by available drilling data. If this is true, then the annual totals reported for 1960, 1964, and 1980-84 may be misleading as indicators of trends for the period 1960-84. Rather, these totals more likely reflect low to moderate levels of drilling activity during a period of considerable fluctuation.

Because the National Water Well Association intends to collect State-by-State drilling data annually, the outlook is good that a data base of current, reliable, and comparable drilling-activity data will be available in 5 to 10 years to permit the relations among annual well totals, economic indicators, and perhaps even regional precipitation patterns to be explored in greater detail. If so, the significance of future trends in water-well drilling, and the significance of outside factors on drilling activity, will be increasingly apparent and meaningful to water planners, water users, and the water-well industry itself.

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