If you have a private well in Minnesota, there’s around a 10% chance the water coming out of your kitchen sink is contaminated.

About 1.2 million Minnesotans get their drinking water from a private well, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. Without the same legal protections and obligations as people living in municipalities, private well users are responsible for making sure their water is safe to drink.

Some of the worst groundwater in the state for high nitrate levels and high pesticide levels is in southeast Minnesota. A Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s groundwater study showed that in western Winona and eastern Olmsted County, between 10% and 55% of households across about 10 townships were drinking water above the health risk limits.

Major contaminants include bacteria, nitrates, pesticides, arsenic, lead and radon.

Jeff Broberg is a geologist and one of the founders of the Minnesota Well Owners Organization. He and his wife have lived on their farm in Winona County since 1986.

“My own personal well is contaminated,” Broberg said. “It’s 400 feet deep and 100 years old, and I’ve not been able to drink the water for over 20 years.”

Broberg quickly discovered that most of his neighbors were in the same boat.

“In the area I live, 40 to 60% of the households have nitrate levels above the health risk limit, and they’re still drinking the water,” Broberg said.
Minnesota Well Owners Organization works with well owners and partners with non-governmental organizations as well as local and state governments. Its goal is to conduct free water quality screening clinics and provide professional help to “connect and activate the community of well owners.”

“Traditionally, water and groundwater has been a conservation issue,” Broberg said. “Slow progress is made with conservation, and that conflicts with the need to have healthy water at your kitchen sink.”

The Minnesota Department of Health recommends having your well tested for nitrate every other year. It’s simple to get your well water tested. Broberg suggests starting the process by contacting

one of the 27 accredited labs by the Minnesota Department of Health

.

“You can contact them, and they’ll send you the sample devices, and everything you need to do,” he said.

Many counties also have programs available for residents to test their water, he said, or they have a contract to get a discounted rate.

“Olmsted County has their own lab, and you can bring it right to Olmsted County,” he said. “Check with your local health department, and with your local soil water and conservation districts.”

The Well Owners Organization also holds 12-13 free water testing clinics a year, held around the state. For most water tests, he said people should expect to pay a reasonable fee.

“If you have to pay, a drinking water test is typically 70 to $100, for all of the compounds that you’d be concerned with in your drinking water,” he said.

Broberg has been around a lot of water testing in his career and has many anecdotes to share. He’s noticed a growing trend of people caring about what’s in their water, and bringing water samples of their family, friends and neighbors.

“There was one that was particularly meaningful — a local dairy farmer who came with his water sample and two other water samples,” said Broberg, who knew the farmer to be an operator of a Grade-A dairy. “He said I’m worried about the little girls across the street.”

If your water comes back as being contaminated, Broberg said it’s important to know that you have options.

“We don’t want to drop people off in the wilderness,” he said. “We have to help people understand what the options are.”

Broberg said any compound that is contaminating water can be “effectively treated relatively inexpensively.”

“But first, you want to make sure you have a healthy water supply, and that might require an alternative water supply while you’re cleaning up and getting the right treatment,” Broberg said.

After that, it’s time to select a treatment that matches the water test that you’ve got, addressing the contaminants that you have concern with.

According to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Private Well Testing Guidelines, no single treatment process can remove all substances in water, and you may need to combine several treatment processes into one system. For Broberg, that is a reverse osmosis home treatment system attached to his kitchen sink.

In sampling done by the Department of Agriculture, water from 44 private drinking water wells was sampled before and after it passed through the homeowners reverse osmosis system.

“The results indicated reverse osmosis home treatment systems removed 99.7% of pesticides that were evaluated, including 100% of the cyanazine break-down products. The reverse osmosis systems also reduced nitrate concentration to levels below the drinking water standard (10 ppm),” reads the department’s guidelines.

The water contamination isn’t a static issue for Broberg, whose well water went from nitrates measuring at 8 ppm when he bought the property in 1986, to 20 ppm when he tested the water five years ago.

The Well Owners Organization is one of 11 groups to petition the EPA to “seek injunctions through civil actions, as needed, to return the area’s underground aquifers to a safe and drinkable condition.” But Broberg said right now, the organization is focused on helping ensure safe drinking for Minnesota private well users who depend on groundwater for their private water systems and wells.

“People are more worried about the blame than the solution,” he said. “We’ve asked (the EPA) for help, mostly in communication planning, outreach coordination between our own fractured state agencies. That’s a long ways away from attacking dairy industry.”

He said the main challenge the organization has is getting the issue of water contamination on the radar of public health.

“We will be going to the Legislature this year, talking to the health committees to try to pass legislation to assure that there’s water testing and treatment options available for people statewide,” he said. “They’ve relegated this often to a conservation issue, and we’re doing great things in conservation that will help, but those would take a decade or a generation.”

Aleta Borrud, a former geriatrician at Mayo Clinic with training in public health, said that water contamination is “definitely a public health issue.”

“When we think about the increasing levels of (water contamination) exposure, causing increased numbers of cancers or increased birth defects — this is going to cost us down the road in terms of our health care expenditures, and yet we have answers for this,” Borrud said, referring to agricultural practices that can be changed to reduce nitrate runoff into groundwater and surface waters. “I think as a public, we need to press our government to support our farmers who are making the right changes in agricultural practices to protect the water for all of us. It’s in our public interest. We need our farmers. They’re essential to our economy.”

Minnesota is not alone in concerns about safety of the water coming from private wells.

A survey conducted last year

found as many as three out of four Iowa residents with private wells may be at risk for unhealthy levels of nitrate.

“Around 7.6% of Iowa households — 230,000 to 290,000 Iowans — rely on private well water as their water source,” said Jamie Benning, assistant director for Agriculture and Natural Resources Extension at Iowa State University.

Benning said that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the EPA recommend yearly testing of private wells, but it is the owner’s responsibility to test.

Findings in the report included that only 10% of households tested their water quality in the last year, around 50% of households supplement their drinking water with bottled water or water coolers, and while 70% of households report using water filters, just 10% report having a reverse osmosis filter that can remove nitrate.

“The report clearly identifies needs for more regular testing and awareness of the potential risks. Testing can bring peace of mind that well water is safe to drink or inform next steps if an unsafe level of a contaminant is found,” Benning said.

For private well testing information in Iowa, visit the

Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ website

.

In South Dakota, private well owners can request sample bottles for testing of water supplies through the South Dakota Department of Health. Sample bottles and instructions are also available from County Extension offices.

Visit the SDDH website to learn more.

North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality recommends that private well owners test their water at regular intervals to maintain confidence in water quality.

A list of certified water testing laboratories in North Dakota can be found in

a NDSU Extension publication

entitled “Drinking Water Quality: Testing and Interpreting Your Results.”