Arizona Drinking Water Well Contaminants - Open Repository.pdfVIP

Arizona Drinking Water Well Contaminants Item type text; Pamphlet Authors Uhlman, Kristine; Rock, Channah; Artiola, Janick Publisher College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ) Downloaded 1-Mar-2016 05:44:50 Item License /licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ Link to item /10150/156930 ARIZONA COOPERAT IV E E TENSION AZ1503 November, 2009 Arizona Drinking Water Well Contaminants Kristine Uhlman, Channah Rock, Janick Artiola If you own a well in Arizona, you have the sole responsibility for checking to see if your drinking water is contaminated. Arizona state law does not require private well owners to test or treat their water for purity. The most common contaminants found in Arizona groundwater in concentrations above health-based drinking water standards are arsenic, fluoride, radioactive elements (responsible for gross alpha radiation), and nitrate. Nitrate contamination, although it can be natural, is usually due to either agricultural practices (excessive fertilizer use and/or poor irrigation practices), or failing septic systems that allow contaminated waters to drain into the aquifer. Naturally occurring groundwater contaminants are dependent on aquifer geology and are discussed below. Geologic forces have influenced the quality of water held within Arizona aquifers. The groundwater basins in the geologic past included river drainage systems that could not reach the sea, generating large inland lakes—such as the Great Salt Lake in Utah—that concentrated the salts as 1 water evaporated. Large deposits o