Hampstead Water Tracks Water Level As Part Of Production Well Project

A Solinst Levelogger deployment site in a stream. (Credit: Charlie Lanza, Hampstead Water)

Hampstead Area Water Services Company serves a variety of customers in southern New Hampshire on projects that span the spectrum of water use. Employees of the company have constructed water pumping and treatment stations, massive storage tanks and even service lines for newly built homes. But beyond building things, the company also has a hand in keeping track of the water that flows through the structures it helps to build.

One important measure that HAWSCO employees monitor is water level, which is key to making sure there is enough water to sustainably supply populations near pumping operations. In one such project near Atkinson, New Hampshire, the company maintains around 12 Solinst Levelogger Junior Edge Water Level Loggers to track the impacts that a production well is having on a nearby stream and pond.

“We use level loggers all over the place in southern New Hampshire. We’ve used them on short-term pumping tests, long-term groundwater monitoring and pressure monitoring at various points throughout community water systems,” said Charlie Lanza, project manager at HAWSCO.

Lanza says that the company has used level loggers to understand changes to water levels and pressure in a lot of applications. They have been used to gauge the effects that operations have had on water wells, or in long-term studies to track historical water levels in relation to precipitation and pumping rates.

Hampstead Water uses Solinst Leveloggers in many streams like this one to track water level. (Credit: Charlie Lanza, Hampstead Water)

And water level data are used all over the place to help in achieving the company’s mission.

“It is utilized in preparing in-house reports and graphs and also to prepare reports for submission to the local environmental protection agency for review,” said Lanza. “Sometimes the data is submitted to a consulting hydrogeologist and they will perform further analysis and/or reporting.”

For the project near Atkinson, the data are helping to establish what effects, if any, the production well is having on local waterways. Lanza says that the data set collected so far spans just one year.

“During 2014, the water levels at this particular project dropped quite a bit in June/July. It is too early on this project to say one way or the other, but so far the data we are collecting is not trending in the right direction,” said Lanza. “We will need additional years of data to establish whether the pumping well is affecting the nearby pond or stream.”

Featured Image: A Solinst Levelogger deployment site in a stream. (Credit: Charlie Lanza, Hampstead Water)