Expensive Ignorance, Powerful Knowledge

摘要

The field of water well rehabilitation and maintenance has been unusually immune to the normal rules of facilities practice over the years. Maintenance personnel in most facilities carefully conduct routine maintenance of structures, vehicles, and other machines. However, this has not always been the case with well installations. Fortunately, this has changed somewhat since the 1980s with some good examples of systematic planning and execution. But there are still facilities today that operate well equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars who do not know (1) the operational performance of their assets; (2) what is happening to them; and (3) what to do about it. For this month's column I will overlook small private wells (which were featured in "Life with Wells," May 2004) and focus on larger installations. The principles, though, are generally the same for small systems.