It can be scary to think about running your kitchen tap and thinking the water is dirty.
A lot of people in Wisconsin know this, and there are calls to make a program that helps people replace their wells stronger.
The farm where Tom Van Loh and his wife live is in Marathon County. Even though they don’t farm, there is cropland all around their house. Van Loh said that over time, nitrates built up in their well, and tests finally showed that the levels were too high.
The county helped them apply for help through the State Well Compensation Grant Program. The grant paid for a reverse osmosis system. For the couple, it saved their lives.
“We knew for years that we were drinking contaminated water,” he said. “It gave us a lot of peace of mind.”
Van Loh said they probably wouldn’t have been able to pay the $12,000 price tag, and they no longer have to buy a lot of water in bottles.
Agencies and help groups say there are waiting lists for the handouts and that it’s hard to get them when nitrates are involved. The program was briefly extended by federal pandemic aid, but the money ran out in the end.
Chase Cummings, who works as a county conservationist for the Dunn County Environmental Services Department, said that his department and others are keeping an eye on places where nitrate contamination is rising.
He agreed that the standards for getting into the well compensation program make it hard for people to clean up their drinking water, especially when it comes to farm runoff.
“The amount of nitrate must be higher than 40 parts per million,” Cummings said. “10 parts per million is the safe level for health.” That means the nitrate level in your private well would have to be very high. It’s possible for one person to be qualified for the well-compensation program under the current rules.
A lot of other property owners are stuck because they don’t qualify. Cummings said that county governments are being more deliberate about careful land use, such as working with farmers to adopt conservation practices so that lower amounts of nitrates get into water sources nearby.
They are also starting more conversations about ways to make grants more available.