Water Access 101 for Land Investors w/ Mitch Klein

248: In this episode, I’m talking again with civil engineer and land investor Mitch Klein about a major issue land investors often overlook: water access.

(Show Notes: REtipster.com/248)

We cover everything from private wells, rural water districts, and municipal systems to the shocking realities of contamination, costs, and whether your property can even get drinking water.

Whether you're subdividing a large parcel or building on a small rural lot, this critical info is an episode you don't want to miss.

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Transcript

0:22

Hey, everybody, how's it going? This is Seth Williams. You're listening to the REtipster podcast. This is episode 248. And a couple episodes ago, in episode 246, we had a great conversation between myself and Mitch Klein about septic and sewer systems. It was, I think, a much needed conversation because a lot of this information has been kind of mysterious in the land investing world, and it shouldn't be. This is really important stuff we all need to know. And we really got to the bottom of a lot of issues regarding septic and sewer systems. And the reason I'm talking to Mitch again today is because we're going to continue that discussion talking mostly about water access and drinking water and how it gets to a property, what determines whether you can drill a well on a property, how to verify that there's actually enough water available for development, whether you're looking at just developing a single lot that you're trying to build on or a much larger one that you want to subdivide. Water access is the other half of the equation. And just a reminder, the reason we're talking to Mitch is because he is a civil engineer and a land investor, and he specializes in water and wastewater systems. He's got loads of experience in both municipal and private water system design. So if anybody would know the answer to these questions, it's Mitch. So Mitch, welcome to the show. How's it going? Thanks, Seth. Happy to be here. That's a tall bar to reach, though, of any questions. So I do want to throw that out there. I'll give it a go. We'll put it that way. I'm sure you know a heck of a lot more than I do. So, Mitch, if we're talking about rural land that isn't on city water, does not have access to a city or municipal water system, what are the main options for water access? What should we be looking at? High level. It really comes down to jurisdiction. Again, like we talked about in the septic episode, the locality of that particular parcel will help define what your options are. High picture, you can bring water, like you can truck it in, which is done in certain areas where it's not available or there's contaminants, etc. You can poke a hole in the ground and suck water out of the ground, which is a well, or you can tie into pipes of existing systems that already treat water and distribute it to that area. So those existing systems, usually it's a rural water district if you're out beyond city limits, or the municipality or local development, they call them SIDs here in Nebraska, may be able to provide you water as well, or you're connected to the city or the municipality. So there's a handful of ways to get water, but each of those ways are different and have different processes and hoops to jump through to be able to have access. I mean, maybe a better question I should have asked to start this out with is, let's say I'm looking at a rural-ish vacant lot. How do I find out if there is a municipal water system at all? Like, that's probably the first question is, is there municipal water access? Because if there is, that probably simplifies a lot of things, assuming they have the capacity to pump water out to my property. But how do I get that answer? Like, what should I be Googling first about my property to find out if there's a water system there? In the age of AI, you can have ChatGPT or Claude do a deep dive on what are the local jurisdictions and potential strings attached or ways to access water in the area. And then have it pull out contact information, start calling around. If you're already familiar with the area and you have a realtor or a well driller, they can point you in that direction, too, versus just doing a web search. But I've kind of just started to lean more on AI for particular partials and properties and then following up with some phone calls. So if you were using something like ChatGPT, Deep Research, I know pretty much all the AI platforms have some equivalent to that. And it's pretty awesome if you've not used it yet. You can find just truckloads of information that you otherwise would probably never know. But if you're using something like that, what exactly would you be asking it for? Like, are you giving it county, city, township, parcel number, coordinates? Feeding it as much of that information as possible. And then like, what's the question you're asking exactly? It's like a role play kind of thing. Like you are a world-class agent in this area and I'm looking to develop this property. Give me advice on how I can get X, Y, Z. In this particular case, give me advice on how I can access water. Are there local jurisdictions that I need to pay attention to? How do I get ahold of them to verify what you're telling me, et cetera, as how I would do that. So the prompt is a little bit more weighty than like, can I get water here? But sometimes it'll spit out enough to get you started anyway. Yeah, that actually sounds like a good idea for a custom GPT. Maybe I could build that. Although I don't know if you can do deep research with custom GPTs that are just like free for everybody, but just having something that's sort of like pre-built to know what it's looking for. And you just. Tell it something as simple as the coordinates. I don't know if it's sophisticated enough to do that, but it would be nice to have some kind of a plug and play as easy as possible way to just give it the info and it understands what it's looking for and it finds what's there. So, but to your point, similar to our past conversation about the septic systems. Calling a local well driller, I'm sure it could give you a lot of the answers you're looking for. Yeah, we'll probably get into it just like we did with the septic installers. They're going to know so much about that area. In my experience, that one 15 minute conversation will get you quite a ways down the road with somebody in the area. I was wondering, because this was helpful for me when we were talking about septic systems, just this idea that when you're looking at it nationwide, one rule of thumb to consider is that the property needs to be about an acre or larger to just assume there's enough room for a septic system, sometimes less than that, depending on the jurisdiction. But when I'm thinking about drilling a well, for example, if that's the only way to get water, does the size of the lot matter at all? Or is it kind of irrelevant? That's not even really what we're looking at. We're just, is there an aquifer there? And that's pretty much all you need to know. It's a little bit more nuanced than that. But for the high level first pass, like we talked about before, if you're looking at septic, you're probably looking at well too. You're probably rural enough that you don't have one or both. And then you have setbacks and separation distances that you need to have between your septic and well, and for very good reason. You don't want any of your septic water making it into your drinking water. So at a high level, yeah, about an acre. For my evaluation, anything above an acre, you're usually. Available to at least spatially label the septic and a well out on your property. If it gets less than an acre, certain jurisdictions may allow it and you can kind of play Tetris with the pieces on your lot of what does and doesn't fit and can and can't fit accordingly. But yeah, an acre is roughly kind of that first pass that I've gone off of. And one of the reasons that's true is because of the assumption that you're probably going to need a septic system there as well because it's rural. Usually, yeah. So if for some reason you literally just needed to drill a well, but there was a sewer system there, then the size of the lot could feasibly be smaller? Yep, correct. Can you break down the three main categories we're talking about here? So we've got private well, we've got rural water district, and municipal city water. Are those the three main categories or are there different ones we need to be thinking about? There's also trucking, which I'm still surprised this is a thing, but in certain areas, that's either a requirement temporarily. Usually, you're trying to set it up so that you can have something more reliable and more consistent. Instead of having to bring water, have it stored, you have to take on the treatment component of disinfecting that water while it sits, which is not ideal. We'll put it that way. It can be cost prohibitive and it's onerous to keep checking and running your tests and making sure everything's up to date versus having more of a consistent source. So those are kind of the big four. Trucking, well, there's a rural water district, which is usually smaller lines that go quite a ways out. And they'll typically have some sort of treatment component, often wells, at least in the area that I'm from. I'm from Nebraska. There's often wells. You'll have an elevated storage tank, aka water tower, and then a distribution system. And then you get into the cities itself, and that gets a lot more sophisticated and treatment for a lot more people. You get into a lot more systems that are more efficient, etc. I guess some rural water systems will have surface water sources, which is another big deal for drinking water is where is the source of water. But then a lot of municipalities, especially on the coasts or near big lakes, will have surface water sources, which is almost completely different approach for treatment because you have different contaminants that you're concerned about, etc. And we don't need to belabor that yet. But with this focus on the wells itself, there's smaller private wells, which are four to six inches in diameter. And then when you get to the rural water district or even the municipalities, some of those wells will get up to 24 inches or even 36 inches. And there's another technology that I think is super cool, but not pertinent to necessarily land investors. There's actually a horizontal well technology out there that are just massive and can suck a ton of water. I don't know if you know anything about fracking in the oil industry. Is that anything like that, or is it just a completely different thing? So fracking in its concept is you pressurize an area to kind of break up different oil rock formations. And then in that breaking it up, it releases more oil from that formation. So the technology is similar in that there's a horizontal drilling component, like you go down and then out in like a star or radial pattern. That's where the technologies differ for water. For water, they're not necessarily going to go frack, it will flow a lot easier than petroleum-based products. I think we're going to get into this more later in this conversation, but in my brain, the way I always assumed this worked, if I have to drill a well, then I am going straight down and there's basically a big underground lake and that's where the water's coming from, which I know you already... Dispelled that myth. That's not exactly how it works. But with this horizontal thing, does that mean I could basically drill down and like steal water from some other aquifer that isn't beneath my property? Like, is that what we're talking about here? So the oil industry does that a lot. They'll buy rights for large areas with water too. But just to clarify for our listeners, we're now talking large municipalities and that use. So the municipality will buy water rights for a large area. You can't go poke a hole under someone else's property without attaining their water rights is the short of it. Sticking with the theme of these four categories we talked about. So again, private well, rural water district, municipal city water, and then also trucking water. So this thing about the rural water district, is this like if there is a large subdivision of maybe 200 houses and they have their own water tower that feeds water to all 200 of the houses, but it's not city owned. It's like a big HOA or something like that. and they have their own self-contained, self-managed water system. Is that kind of what we're talking about when we say a rural water district? Yes. So that would be kind of like an SID rule where there's a subdivision or sub-development in a tighter area. Also, there are rural water districts that will cover portions of entire counties where the actual users are spread out like maybe a half a mile between homes as well. So yeah, the rural water district, I'm using it in a larger kind of brushstroke to include all of those components. But at some point. That group of people were motivated to say, let's just have a few wells. We all pitch in a little bit to treat and keep all of that owner and maintenance components. We'll all do that as a community or as a district. So sometimes those are in place where you're looking for properties and they have certain requirements that you would have to meet to tie in. Maybe they have to add capacity. There's just a whole checklist that they would need to go through. Before I ever talk to you about this, I never even thought about the importance of treating water, making sure it's like high enough quality, it's drinkable, it's not poisoned or contaminated or something like that. But that kind of adds a layer of complexity to this because when I think about like the rural water district, for example... Who regulates that? Is there some federal or state body that comes in and says, hey, we're going to make sure you're treating this right? Or is it kind of just up to them? Like whoever's in charge of that? Yeah, we can do whatever we want. As long as nobody's asking questions, who knows what's going on? I don't really think about that. I turn on the faucet. I just assume it's good to drink. But how does that work? I'll preface this with you can get master's and PhDs in just water treatment alone. There's such a massive body of knowledge and so many different variables with water. So zooming way out, water, I'm fascinated with water. If you can't tell, I think it's super cool. As a chemical, it's kind of the reason stuff can live on Earth, right? Because it has this sort of ability to grab stuff, but then let it go accordingly. And it has a cycle. We have a fixed amount of water in the world, but it changes its phases. and so it grabs stuff and lets it go, that kind of thing. But as a result, it's over 150 different potential contaminants at a federal level that if you're going to drink water, you need to be aware of and then verify at a certain cadence that your water does not have these contaminants because they're dangerous to humans. And that is constantly changing and expanding as we learn about new contaminants or different things come into the space. PFAS, meaning PFAs, is kind of the newest the front line of, okay, this is now something that could be cancer-causing. I think it's been proven to cause cancer, but what are the levels of that contamination that's dangerous to people? How do we treat that? How do we detect it? It's constantly evolving. The whole field is evolving. But to circle back, there's the federal set of requirements, and then states will also enforce whatever's pertinent to them, plus covering all of the national requirements. So sometimes it'll add more contaminants. California always gets examples of like, well, everything's. Known to cause cancer in California, but not elsewhere. They go above and beyond some of the standard requirements. So, for example, in Nebraska, we have like 83 contaminants that Nebraska treatment and wells and treatment facilities have encountered and need to do it, and it's within a set of nine rules. There's a tenth coming out to address some of these PFAs and PFOs, and there's a whole group of new contaminants that are coming onto the scene. I guess they've been here, but we're becoming more aware of them. Anyway, a long answer to your question, but yes, they're enforced by the federal, state, and then sometimes even more local requirements. So you go to dig a well, part of that process is to test the water and the quality of that water. And if there are contaminants and it's not deemed safe to drink, you will need to implement some additional treatment or some additional process so that it's then safe to drink. And in terms of regulating that, so what, there's some guy from the state that shows up once a year to just test it and make sure it's happening? Or like, is this every month or every day? Or is there some constant monitor to make sure it's okay? Or it's one thing to have rules, but how do we actually enforce this stuff? That's always moving and changing too, depending on the end user. So if the user is like a municipal treatment plant, There's a lot depending on that water being safe. A lot of people need that water to be safe. So there's an inspector that will come and check at certain times, or they'll put it on the operator of that treatment facility to test regularly and submit those results to the state. And then the state double-check stuff. And then if there are issues or concerns, then that treatment plant will have to work with the state to figure out, A, is this an immediate contamination? So, for example, there's a small town in Nebraska that this past week had E. Coli somehow get into their system, so that was an immediate royal order for that entire city. Boom. Like we can't have people drinking this anymore. You need to boil it because that contaminant can be treated by boiling. Then the state will come in and work with that municipality and those treatment operators and facilities to mitigate the problem. Where did it come from? How did it get contaminated, et cetera, and get them back into compliance. Was this called like the day of where it's like, oh, we're doing our weekly check. Yeah, this has been happening for the past six days. I guess what I'm getting at is like, how on top of it are they? That's a good question. And it kind of depends on the operators. But as soon as that operator becomes aware of it, they are required to report it. And then there's a whole process that they have to go through to notify the public and make sure people are not using that water till it's safe to drink again. And when we're talking about, you know, I have a well drilled on my property and it's just me. So like nobody else depends on this. Is it kind of just up to me to do that? Because like I've got a well on my property. I don't know that we've ever tested for stuff we do have a reverse osmosis system for our drinking water but like if we didn't have that like i could just be getting contaminated and i'd never know it because i'm not even testing it how does that work yeah so wells are a little different in that a there shouldn't be any major changes within that aquifer once you've tapped into it if it's just you on the well you're not drawing that much water and so. When the well is put in place, there's a whole suite of tests that are gone, and then everybody gives it a thumbs up. If it goes through the right processes, it'll get the thumbs up to utilize. And that well, if it's built correctly, will be sealed at the top, so there's no way for surface water to get in and get down to the water that you're drinking. So it's kind of separate. You keep the aquifer connected to your system. They do recommend at least once a year getting your wells tested and inspected. It's not hard to do. If you have any questions or concerned about your specific well, just reach out to your local permitting agency. Start with your state first, and then they may point you to your local county. You can collect a water sample, send it in. They'll run it for you. You'll get your results back. They may have some recommendations. So yeah, if you're curious and it hasn't happened in a while, wouldn't hurt to know that you're good or maybe you need to get something cleaned or whatnot. And with this option of getting the water trucked in, you know, it's a similar thing where it's on you as the homeowner to make sure it's treated and all this stuff. Of these four different categories, the city, rural water district, private well, or trucking water in, which of those would you not trust, if any? Or like, you kind of trust them all. Like, they're all good. I'm sure it's fine. Is there certain quality standards that are like just known to not be that great if you're trucking water in? Like, would you not go down that path? Even though you can, you just wouldn't. Or tell me what you're thinking about that. Yeah, at a high level, the systems are in place so that if there's issues. You can address them and you can trust where your water source is coming from. So if you're trucking it in, you should be getting regular testing. You should have a process in place should your tank get contaminated to get it cleaned out, right? Like you would need to be doing more testing to understand what you're up against versus the wells, how they're built. It's more of an isolated system from potential contamination as long as that original aquifer is not contaminated, but they do recommend every 10 to 15 years, you're probably going to need a new pump anyway. So then you go through inspection and maybe reclean, chlorinate the well, et cetera, in those processes. And then at the municipal and real water district level, there are regular tests that the state requires of those operators so that those things will get caught and addressed in a timely manner. If you have a well, if you're trucking it in, that's more on you as an individual. So trust it as much as you want to test it versus at the municipal level. Unfortunately, there are examples where things have gone awry for long periods of time, but those are actually the exception and not the norm, which is a pretty sweet thing about living where we are living. I've heard stuff like in Mexico, like don't drink the water, that whole thing. Why is that? Like maybe all water everywhere is contaminated, but we just happen to treat ours better. Why do they have problems, but we don't. What's the difference? I could ramble on for a while here. There's like a 30 second version. What would that be? Yeah. To answer your question, they don't have the national and federal standards that the United States does that apply to every state. So there's a level of trust that's lost and maybe locally they do treat to certain areas, but other areas they don't treat to that same standard versus here in the U S it's crazy to think that I can drive 2,000 miles down the road, not even worry about the water. I could just drink it and it'll be fine. I won't get. Any issue with my digestive system, etc. But if you go to certain countries, that level and that standard of water quality is not there, is the short answer. I'll throw a little pitch in too, though. As a civil engineer, I know it sounds biased, but the amount of lives saved and diseases prevented from occurring just from cleaning our water and having good water sources, and then also making sure our dirty water does not mix. Civil engineers like to say, and you can look this up online too, we've saved more lives just by good water treatment than Western medicine has over the last 200 years. So 1850s to 1900s, you have a lot of people dying from cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, diarrhea, right? Like things that nowadays are very uncommon. And in 1900, those four were in the top 10 causes of death in the U.S. And they've been effectively reduced to almost eliminated just by having clean drinking water. So there's that as well. It seems like such a basic fundamental thing that must be figured out. We're talking like lowest bar, you need clean drinking water. Like it's not that difficult of a concept. I wonder why some countries don't have that figured out by now. What do you need to see before you realize the importance of applying these standards everywhere? I know you probably can't answer that, but it's just kind of strange. No. And even historically, the Romans had this figured out 2000 years ago, right? One of the reasons their civilization did so well is they would have a water source separate from where their sewage goes. And that was uncommon. Like Constantinople had like a 250-mile aqueduct network bringing clean water into the city, which is just mind-blowing. And we kind of forgot about it for 1,000 years or 2,000. Now it's like back to being important again. One quick question on the trucking in of water. This is actually kind of significant for land investors who are buying and selling like desert squares or anything in the Southwest U.S. Where water is just more scarce because ideally you're going to have some kind of water, whether it's a well or municipal, that kind of thing. But if you don't, it's just good to know that like last ditch effort, you can do this. It's probably really inconvenient, but I am curious, do you know, if you want to truck in water. What are the size of these tanks that they store the water in? And what does it cost to get a load of water? I realize the question of how long it lasts probably depends how many people that live in there and how much they're using it. But if somebody wanted to budget this out and be like, hey, I'm going to do a water tank. Here's what I can expect to pay to get installed. And every time it's refilled, you know anything about that? Typical water use, at least when you're planning purposes, is about 100 gallons per capita per day is kind of the American norm. Obviously, that varies location to location. It'd be a function of how much storage do you want, how much is available. So I would say 1,000 to a couple thousand gallon tanks, if not more, for a typical family household. But I would, based on the locality, find out what people do. If there's homes there, how do they get their water? And then find who maybe supplies the water to them, et cetera, if it's not brought in by a pipe or a well. But again, yeah, it is kind of one of the least preferred methods. But if you don't have other options and want to live there. I guess you're willing to pay that price, right? And when you say 100 gallons per day, per capita, I think you said? When we say per capita? Per person. That seems like a lot. 100 gallons per person per day? Yeah, it's not what you drink. It's all the water you use. And it's a conservative number so that it can handle your peaks and whatnot. I wonder if that includes, like, if you have an outdoor sprinkling system, stuff like that. It's like nobody really needs that. It's just a nice thing to have. Yeah, it does. So that's kind of a high-level planning metric that folks will use anticipating building out water systems. When we talk about wells and aquifers, for a lot of people doing rural lots, this will be maybe the first thing that comes to mind because the assumption is just that there's no municipal water supply. So, okay, we got to do well. In some parts of the country, this is no problem. In most parts of Michigan or probably the Midwest for that matter, or like in Florida, Georgia, you know, water is plentiful. You're probably going to be fine type thing. But in other areas like Texas, like you might not be fine. There's really no telling what you're going to find, if anything down there. But when they are able to find water is because it's coming from an aquifer. So what exactly is an aquifer? Great question. High level, it's formations within the soil or rocks that allow for water to, to also be in there so think of it almost like a sponge i guess is maybe a good way to put it it's not a big lake underground and there's not rivers flowing underground necessarily instead it's porous material that allows water to sit in that location and the water does flow it's really slow it's like feet per day but water will recharge so in nebraska that's where i'm from we've got a big inactive sand dune region called the sand hills when it rains there that water goes down and seeps through the sand portions. And then it starts to go horizontal once it hits an impermeable layer. And then it'll flow across the state, even into Kansas, Oklahoma, slowly flow. And that's where a lot of wells in our area draw from. And it's recharged in that certain area. So there's a general direction, certain layers that you are more comfortable and more confident pulling water from. But it can be also very local. There's this concept of like perched aquifers. Where there's a certain area that has an impermeable layer. And so that water is sitting on top of, say, bedrock. But then below the bedrock, there's more permeable layers and it's separate aquifers. So if you're above an aquifer or not, ultimately it comes down to your very local soil knowledge. And sometimes you just go poke some holes in the ground until you find it. It's not always an exact science. I don't know why I had this idea in my head. But I had this idea in my head that if you just drill deep enough, you'll find an aquifer. That's probably not actually too, right? There are some times I'm like, no, you're just out of luck. There's nothing there. Correct. And it gets cost prohibitive as you go deeper too, right? The equipment and you're spending more time and money to go deeper. And then can your pumps pump that high, right? You know, you get over 500 feet deep. It's a different amount of effort to bring that water back to the surface. So, in short, obviously the more layers you go through, the odds are higher that you'll find something. So that's kind of half right. But there are spots where they just haven't found water or it's just cost prohibitive to get that deep. So you mentioned that you might have to drill 500 feet, maybe deeper. What is like the typical depth that you would have to drill to get to an aquifer in most areas? So where I'm from, 50 to 300 feet here in Nebraska, you'll be able to hit the Ogallala or the High Plains aquifers. But different areas, we have a couple of properties in New Mexico we're looking at maybe putting the well on and it was over 500 feet. And even then they're like, yeah, it's hit and miss how much water you can draw from it. It's kind of region to region. Yeah. I remember hearing this story of this lady in Texas who was trying to drill a well and the hopes that she would find water down there. She spent like, I think 80,000 bucks or something to drill it going really deep and they didn't find anything. And they're like, Hey, you can spend 10 grand more and we'll go even deeper. And basically like it was possible she could spend all this money and not find anything, just a total waste. And luckily they did find something after drilling 10 grand deeper. I got to thinking, couldn't she have just talked to like well drillers in the area or talk to the neighbors or something? Or how often does this happen? We're like, we're totally speculating here. Like we're going to spend a ton of money, go as deep as we can, and it might not work out. But if it does, this property is suddenly worth a lot more because we have water. Well, how often does it happen? Enough that it's a thing, right? So she was working with a well driller. The well drillers usually, if they're worth their salt, know the area somewhat well and are familiar with where they have and haven't found water, at what depths and what formations they've run into. And they should be tracking all of that information. And that becomes public information, depending on the area. But how often does it happen? Sometimes. And well drillers will be upfront about like, hey, this region... We've struck out at times in asking those questions out ahead of time versus you telling them exactly where you want the well and whatnot. Like have a conversation with them. They know what they're doing. Be collaborative with them. Now, if an aquifer is more of a sponge than a lake, how does it actually pull water from underground? Like if it's not just a nice, clean body of water, what keeps dirt and debris out of the water that comes up? How does it pull out only the water and not the soil and bring that with it? Yeah, great question. So first off, sponge or even like plant on the beach, right? And there's sand and your kids, or maybe when you were young, you dig a hole and you try to put all the water in it and then it just kind of like seeps away. That's the concept. Or if you dig deep enough near the lake, right? That will actually fill up based on the groundwater. So the water can move through the porous nature of the sand, as an example. Your next question is how does it stay clean, right? Big picture, there's kind of two high level water sources. One is surface water and the other is groundwater. Groundwater is usually cleaner by nature because that water has had to travel through media. And so if there are any microorganisms, if there are any sediments which carry different contaminants, those will essentially get filtered out as it moves through that media. When you say media, you mean soil, right? Soil or rock or whatever. So I'm kind of like using that as an all-encompassing term. But as it moves through that soil or rock, it will essentially clean itself to a certain degree. It can't remove certain chemicals, certain contaminants still, but the bigger chunks, like pieces of dirt and sediment, will get removed. So essentially, groundwater sources have a layer of filtration built in just by what it took for the water to get to where it's at. Now, when we're talking well design, and I can send some diagrams to add to the show notes, The well itself is a hole in the ground. Then you slide a casing or essentially a pipe down into that hole. And then on the outside, you'll put like a gravel pack or some sort of additional filter media pack, which could be sand, gravel. And based on what the surrounding soils are, you don't want those soils to get into your well and into your water. So you'll put this kind of filter layer around. And so fines, like fine sediments, will have a difficult time getting through that. and even some people will do fabrics as well, then the pipe that you've put in will have like a grill almost to a screen. And so that screen keeps the gravel pack out, which then if you've got a sand layer out, that water has to travel through multiple layers of additional sub-filtration to get to the pump, which then shoots it up to ground level and into a pressure tank if you've got a pressure tank and into your home. So in short, ways to keep contamination out of the well once the well is built are those kind of screening and filter media on the outside. And then on the top, they'll have to cap that well. They'll use like a bentonite, which is like a clay that swells and can seal up. So you don't have any potential for surface water getting down into your well. You ensure that you're just drawing water from the aquifer itself. Just to kind of confirm the visual picture I have in my brain. So I'm almost seeing like a giant straw that goes into this hole in the ground, but it's not like the straw that you sip your soft drink from. It's a straw with like perforations inside of it. And then around that there's a filter. So like the dirt and stuff can't get through it. The reason for those perforations is that because of the flow of water, like we're not sucking it out from one small point. We're sucking it out from like all up and down this pipe. Is that the idea? Yeah, and that actually, based on the hydraulic conductivity, meaning the amount of water that you can suck out of that. Different formation, that will tell you how much screening height you'll need. So you won't have it screened the entire way. It's just a certain area that you want water to come into. And then one other clarifying point is the Brita filter. Yes, it's a filter, but it actually is more of an adsorption treatment mechanism. We can talk for a while on that too, but that actually uses granular activated carbon. And so a lot of different contaminants will stick to the carbon versus staying in the water. That's almost a different treatment approach in itself. So you won't see a Brita filter, granite activated carbon, at least I've never seen one where they actually put that around a well. Instead, they'll use small rocks, sand, pebbles, gravel, that kind of thing. Are there USGS maps that can show aquifer locations? Is there such a thing? Is there some nationwide map? And I'm like, hey, I got my property in this area of Ohio, California. Is there an aquifer there or not? Like, is there such a thing? And if so, where could we find that? Yeah. So USGS has their soil survey. I think that's a really valuable high level ability to figure out where you have different media and then different strata will have water in them. So there'll be aquifers and whatnot through that. That's a great question. I don't know if there's like an aquifer database at a national level. I would need to check that out. Would there be one at like a state or a county level, do you think? Potentially. Potentially, again, it's kind of up to each state or county how ambitious they've been with their water quality. One thing to keep in mind, though, too, is oftentimes, like in the state of Nebraska, they have a well database. So that can tell you, too, if there's a lot of wells nearby and they're active, that means that there's water. And some of those, depending on the state jurisdiction, will even tell you how deep those wells are. And you can kind of find roughly where they're at geographically. So if I was going to Google or Perplexity or Chad GPT search for something to figure out where these aquifer maps might be, what would I be looking for? You can just dump that in there, aquifer maps. And then how would I verify is what I would then do to see who could you talk to that kind of owns that database or has provided that database to see how accurate it is and kind of go from there. But oftentimes, again, I'd almost lean on local knowledge and for your particular properties, if you're really doing a deep dive, of due diligence and well is something you want to add, or at least you want to see feasibility, it wouldn't hurt to talk to a local well driller and know. And on the septic one, we talked about an example in one of the counties we're working in in South Carolina, there was a ridgeline that kind of told you like everything north of this ridgeline, you're fine. Like you got good permeability, you'll get septic, you'll get well as well, you're fine. South, it's a lot more hit and miss. So sometimes there's a local knowledge that is just really valuable. Yeah, Chad GPT was telling me the keywords, well permit database might show the location, depth and test results. So maybe if you're looking for specific keywords to look for, that might help. Yes. When we're talking about drilling a well, I know these are going to be generalized answers, depends on a lot, but back in our conversation about the septic system, we talked rough idea of costs like 10 grand or maybe two to three times more than that. If you have to do alternative systems, when we're talking about a well and the components of, you know, the pipe and the pump and the pressurized tank inside your house and all this stuff, what is a typical cost to set up the well? Are we talking like 10 grand, 20 grand, more or less? What do you think? Yeah. And in my part of the world, 10 to 20 is a good budgetary number. But again, yeah, so many variables. If you're going through rock, that's a different type of drilling material and could increase costs. Different drill head would be needed for that. There's also how long is it going to take different components. So in New Mexico, we were looking at a well that was like 500 plus fee, and it was 60 grand starting cost, and it would just go up from there if they don't find it. You keep paying more until they find something. It's fairly localized. It's hard to make a nationwide budgetary number. I think the water issue is a huge determining factor of what the value and usability of that property is going to end up being. Like if it's a thumbs up or thumbs down, like it makes it a deal or no deal. You know, I think in some cases, if there is a municipal system nearby, the question is, hey, can you get money out to my property too? Like do you have the capacity, the water of supply to do that? If the answer to that is no, then I guess the next option is, okay, let's think about the well option. And then the question becomes, how deep do we have to drill? Is there any known success with wells in these areas? According to other well drillers, it's just a matter of thinking like, how much are we willing to gamble on this to try to see if there's water under this property? And I feel like for a lot of areas, this idea of trucking in water. Like it's an option, but it's not really an option. It's not a very desirable option. So it might be able to save a property from the jaws of death, but like, it's still like the least desirable solution to the problem. Right. But it just may be the norm for that area of how they get their water too. Right. We're making huge brushstrokes here talking about the entire nation water supply, right. Which is completely different environments and climates, right. So we're desert versus mountain or, you know, up in Michigan, you've got water coming out of your ears. You've got, you know, Great Lakes all around. So it's kind of hard to make these broad brushstrokes. But in those areas where tanking water is the norm in rural situations, then, I mean, that's just how to play ball if you want to build a home. I guess I don't know much about this, but I remember hearing. Elon Musk say a few years ago, talking about how the problem of lack of water is actually not that difficult of a problem to solve if you can start pumping in ocean water. Desalination. Desalination. Seems like maybe an oversimplification. I mean, I'm sure it is probably very expensive to do this, right? But do you know of any places in the US where they're actually doing this? And if not, like, why haven't they started doing this more liberally? I think maybe in California, there's a few desalination plants, but it's so expensive per gallon that it's essentially become cost prohibitive. Now, if you have enough demand, an economy that can afford to spend that much more per gallon to treat their water, then that's where they step in. And so desalination plants are really common in the Middle East, also in like Indonesia type area, Singapore, those areas. There's quite a few desalination plants as well. Desalination, the most common treatment is actually reverse osmosis. But at scale, right? So reverse osmosis, the basic function is you're taking water and you're forcing it through a semi-permeable membrane to squeeze out good water. And then you have brackish water, which is the nasty stuff. So then you got to go either dispose of it or dump it back in the ocean because it's extra salty, right? There's different mechanisms to it, but reverse osmosis. It's expensive. It works at a private level. You've got a system because you can afford to do that and it's not cost prohibitive for your family to do that. At scale, it becomes more and more difficult. So there's plenty of water out there and we could just boil all of our water, which is like the way to get it the cleanest, still it essentially. But that's really cost prohibitive to do at scale. And so that's kind of where this whole like economics steps into play as well as what are your local treatment requirements or contaminants and how much can you afford to versus what do you need to do to get that water clean enough to drink. It's kind of this whole spectrum. I thought I heard somebody talking about this desalination plant could actually be placed in Mexico on the border and pump it in from there, thereby making it cheaper somehow. Have you ever heard of that or do you think that'll ever happen? Yes, but then you're kind of getting around some of the regulations potentially as well and how that plant is operated. So, I have not heard of that specifically, but there's all sorts of different water schemes out there. There's a super interesting one. So, the Pacific Northwest has so much water that they just get rain and rain and rain, and it just goes right back into the ocean. One theory is you capture a lot of that water and route it south, basically tie into LA's system, which LA has a fascinating water source history if you ever want to nerd out on water stuff. But you capture a massive amount of water if you were able to just capture that runoff and keep it in the States instead of going right back to the ocean. But yeah, there's all sorts of different supply schemes. New York's is really fascinating. of these massive tunnels that they draw from upstate New York to bring clean water into the city. That is fascinating. I'll have to look into that. Tell me really quickly, water softener. I ask this because in my area where I live, we have a lot of, not horrendously hard water, but it's hard-ish, enough that like most people need a water softener. And... My understanding is you're basically just adding salt to the water, which makes it taste less disgusting. Like that's my non-scientific version of what's going on. But why does that happen? So is it iron that's in the water naturally? It doesn't take anything away from it, adding something to the water. So how would adding more chemicals make it taste better? It seems like we've been wanting to filter stuff out of it. So there's actually a step in between that's missing because when you have a water softener, you just keep pouring salt in, right? That's it. There's actually these beads that are ion exchange resins, and that's what the treatment actually occurs from. And I'll step back a little bit. You're onto this, and I do want to hit on a couple things. One is there's three really common additional treatment steps that private users will implement. One is a water softener, and that's if you have hardness. And usually you get hardness from groundwater if groundwater is your source. So there's chemicals that will kind of leach out of the rock formations like calcium, manganese, iron, etc. Heavy metals sometimes do. What water softeners do, the main treatment mechanism is an ion exchange resin that will have a stronger pull on those chemicals so that they'll detach from the water molecule, stick to that bead. Once all your beads are full, then you have to get all of those contaminants off of your ion exchange resins. And so that's where the salt comes in. So the salt comes in and it kicks off all of those other calcium, magnesium, iron off of your ion exchange resins and then replaces it with the salt. In that so that it kicks all of your contaminants off. Then it does another batch, right? So it's usually daily is the water softwares I'm familiar with is where they'll run this kind of backwash and treatment cycle. So that's how it removes your calcium and magnesium and et cetera. This is the actual ion exchange resin mechanism. There's two more. The one we talked about is Brita filter. Brita filter is fascinating because it actually uses granular activated carbon. It's a carbon that has been burned in the absence of oxygen. So it doesn't actually burn completely. It just isolates the carbon structures. And it's like black. If you ever crack into your Brita filter or you've had one spill or whatever, it's black. A handful of granular activated carbon has the same surface area as a football field. So there's just these massive porous components. And there's a slight charge that will pull different contaminants out of the water. So that's how a Brita filter works, is short. And so that granular activated carbon will become spent once it fills up and it uses adsorption with a D, not a B, adsorption, adsorption to kind of collect all of these contaminants in the media itself. Quick question on that. So the Brita filter, once it has absorbed all it can absorb, can it get to the point where it actually contaminates water? Like it makes it worse as a result of going through it? No, it'll just fill up. And it'll still hang on to those contaminants. And then the other contaminants won't have a place to stick, so they'll just go through. Gotcha. Okay. Good to know. So that's why you just change it out, throw it away, right? They'll use like pecan shells. The media is just fascinating. It's usually some sort of woody material is the most common to get that. And then the last is an RO, reverse osmosis, which we talked about a little bit. And essentially you pressurize through a membrane. You basically use pressure to force water through it. And that membrane prevents a lot of contaminants from going through it. So then the water that does go through is cleaner as a result. Which one do you think is the best? Like which would you choose if money were no object? So it depends on how clean you want your water, right? And what is needed. So if money were no option, sure, do all of them, right? And there's actually distillation, which is a fourth that is somewhat common. It depends on how clean you want your water. The cleaner your water gets, this is something that I think seems counterintuitive to a lot of folks, it's going to taste more bland, like you're not going to get a good flavor. A lot of the best tasting waters out there have some hardness to them. They've got some calcium and maybe a hint of magnesium or iron to give it a little bit of flavor. But the cleaner you make your water, the less flavor you're going to get. And it's actually funny. I used to work in a lab in grad school. If you clean it too much. Hyper purified water can actually be dangerous to you because it doesn't have anything that's sticking to it. So it'll grab stuff from your body or your cells as well. So it's dangerous to drink like ultra purified water. So there's kind of a sweet spot that you want to get to. Is ultra purified water distilled water? Like, is that the purest form you can get? So you distill it. And then there's these systems that we had at the lab that could take it all the way down to where it is just water, like just H2O, but it's ready to interact with whatever it can get its little hands on, if that makes sense. Water's always grabbing something and taking it with it is a high level way to think of it. I used to work for Pepsi back when I was in college. And I remember taste testing the different types of water. I would try Aquafina, which was Pepsi's, and I would try like Dasani, which is Coca-Cola's version of it. And then I would take Smart Water To me, the smart water, like it literally tasted soft. It was really weird. But I think it's because they... Add salt to it, right? Or probably something else to make it taste different? Maybe. I don't know what smart water does. And sometimes there's like natural spring waters that have the best flavor. It's like a well, that water is coming from the ground. It's pulled some of those flavors and maybe calcium or some of those other things from the media that it traveled through before it was in the spring. I know we talked a little bit about contamination, the PFAS and that kind of thing, which is actually an issue where I live because I live in Rockford, Michigan, just north of Grand Rapids. And back in the 1960s, Wolverine Worldwide, the shoe company that makes like Merrill shoes and Bates and lots of different well-known brands, they're based here in Rockford. It's a billion dollar company. But back in the 60s, there was no thought about environmental stuff at all. So they would take all their chemicals and stuff and they just would dump it. And they discovered all these different PFAS areas and Wolverine paid, I don't know how many tens of millions of dollars to clean it all up. So it's resolved now. But I say all this just because... It's interesting how it's not just a question of if there's water, there's also like, is it contaminated water? Because if it's contaminated, it's not like there's no water, but now we have this huge extra layer of cost to treat the water, right? Does a land investor have to answer both questions? Not only is there water, but how contaminated is it? Am I thinking about this the right way? You're thinking about the end user, right? Sitting in their home, what does it take to get the water to them. At a high level, yeah, there are some areas of contamination and the EPA has different like Superfund sites, which is kind of the worst case contaminated areas. Then there's different tiers. There's like brownfields and whatnot. So there's documented areas of major contamination like what you're just talking about. And so if your property is in those areas, yeah, I guess that would be something to keep in mind. I've not run into a Superfund site yet where I'm looking for stuff, but I'm looking rural. Usually Superfund sites or near industrial or historically industrial use areas. So near big population centers, kind of like that. Yeah, I think Brian at the Inner Circle said he was helping to kind of work through the hoops and permitting process to kind of unlock the value of one of these former Superfund sites once it's cleaned up. Yeah, that is something to be aware of if you're looking in the formerly industrial areas. It would be to kind of check out what's out there and. Known contamination sites. PFAS itself, it's a national thing now. It's front and center for a lot of the treatment industry as well to try to figure out how do we address this. Even on the medical side, we're trying to get our arms and heads wrapped around what levels are truly dangerous, what levels are tolerable, if that's even an option. The problem with PFAS is it's an accumulation mechanism. So if you're even exposed to very low levels over a long period of time, it builds up in your body and that's where it's dangerous so within treatment measurements like parts per thousand parts per million is kind of the usual measurement levels for some of these other contaminants where they're dangerous to human health but with PFAS we're talking parts per billion parts per trillion I think currently we can confidently detect down to four parts per trillion I'm not trying to scare people but I sat through a talk on this and there's some medical, arguments that even lower than that, prolonged exposure, have carcinogen effects, have cancer potential. So it's kind of this whole balance of the medical and the treatment, and then the regulators are all trying to figure out what's dangerous, where is the contamination at, what's detectable, and how do we treat it? That's another big issue too with the PFAS, is there's not a lot of scalable treatment. Mechanisms. But one good news that came from the talk was over the last 10 years, they've basically shut down most of these PFAS industries. They have to use different chemicals and whatnot. So in the 10 years that they've shut these down, they're already seeing the levels of contamination in the environment go down. So it's already becoming more dilute. It's already kind of resolving itself. That's one good news on the PFAS front. So it's not like forever contamination, like the soil can actually treat it and make it better over time? Or it's just becoming more dilute, meaning it's spreading out more to where it's lower exposure. But I was like, OK, well, that's one good news, one good thing to take away from this. It's just fascinating to me how the earth can like clean itself over time. Mind is blown, you know. Part of that is water. Water moves through different phases. So it'll go from gaseous, liquid, frozen, and that helps break these other chemicals down in that process. One thing that I have heard concern about, again, in my own firsthand experience in the area where I live, is whenever they build a lot of new houses in this rural subdivision area that I'm at. Each of those houses has to drill a new well, and people have been concerned, like, what if we get too many wells dipping into the same aquifer? Is that going to lower all of our water pressure. Is that really a thing? Like, can that happen where others can only handle X number of wells here or everything's going to get ruined? How does that work? Yeah. So objectively, you can draw an aquifer down. You just suck too much water out. But part of the well drilling and well permitting process takes that into account. So that's more on the jurisdiction or the state to determine, are we under risk of. Depleting our water sources, that aquifer. So in western parts of Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, there's a huge water rights issue. In drier parts of the world, water rights are the solution to that. You can only pull X amount of gallons out of this well per year or per season is how they would mitigate issues with that. All right. So we're kind of nearing the end of this conversation, but maybe just to recap, what would be like a simple step-by-step checklist for evaluating water access on a property? It sounds like it's starting with, is there a municipal water supply of any kind? And then once you get to the well step, talking to local well drillers or, I'll let you take it away. I won't speak for you. When I'm looking at properties, yeah, landlocked, floodplains, wetlands, right? Sewer and water should be part of the checklist. and we're focusing on water, the easiest button is there's municipal water supply, sweet. Usually municipal water supply has already accounted for if they've got a water pipe running near your property, they've already accounted for that area. Being used for single-family residences. So is this assuming we're talking about a small residential lot? Like if I'm looking at like an 80-acre parcel that I want to plait out and subdivide, is that a different thing? Because like, hey, we don't know how many houses are going to go here yet. So there might not be water for you. Yeah, good clarification. So that then goes back to the municipality and having that discussion of it. Can you handle, you know, 80-acre lot? Can you handle 300 units, et cetera, to supply that? And they either have done the study and they've sized that water main accordingly to handle that potential sub-development or they haven't. And if not, then sometimes they'll bring water out at cost to the municipality. Other times they'll put it on the developer to bring additional lines out to supply that potential development. So yes, for a bigger sub-development, you're going to get into the weeds with those municipalities on all sorts of other fronts too. Water is going to be part of that conversation. But yeah, so when I'm looking for smaller lots. If there's a waterline nearby, usually you're good. And then if not, is there a rural water district in the area that maybe would say, hey, you can't do wells. You need to supply through our source. And then if not, then you've got the opportunity to do wells. With that, I would usually reach out to a local realtor, et cetera, to say, hey, how many wells are in the area? Or you can pull up the well maps if you don't want to talk to anybody for that region and see, okay, yeah, there's a bunch of wells near this property. Likely we would be able to get a well put on here as well. So that's kind of the overarching checklist to go through due diligence. And then if not, well, okay, start talking to folks. Is this an area where they haul water? And if you just can't get water period, and I guess that probably would never happen because you can truck it on, but maybe that's just not feasible or it's just not worth it or whatever reason, like that's not really a good an option for you. So if water just isn't there. Then I guess the next step is like, well, you just have to find the next best use for this property that doesn't require water access, right? Is that the bottom line? Yeah. Unless you're talking like a big subdivision, maybe you work with a local engineer that could look at surface water collection and treatment. Like there's always something you can do to get water. It's just the more you do, the more it's going to cost, right? And so that is an economically feasible for what your goals are for that parcel. So as we wrap this up, are there any like most misunderstood parts about groundwater in wells that you see and hear from people? If you could just like dispel any myths or like fix people's thinking about how this works, anything come to mind? I think we hit on a lot of them. Just you've asked really good questions so far at a high level. Water is really important. And I think that it's kind of taken for granted here in the U.S. That we have access to clean drinking water. We aren't concerned from a health perspective. what that water is. We've got systems in place to make sure that that's protected. But yeah, it's like a whole science and there's a whole industry behind it to make sure that people can have safe water. Well, Mitch, thanks again for sharing your expertise. For anybody listening who wants a second opinion or needs help interpreting local water or septic requirements, you can always reach out to Mitch through his website, XP Engineering. That's xpengr.com. I'll also include a link to that in the show notes for this episode. It's retipster.com forward slash 248. And also don't forget, if you missed our first conversation about septic and sewer systems, go back and check that out. It's at retipster.com forward slash 246 or episode 246, wherever you're listening. It'll give you the other half of the equation to this whole conversation about sewer and water and everything that goes on with that. As always, if you found this episode helpful, Be sure to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts if you think of it and share it with another land investor who could benefit from it. And thanks again, everybody, for listening. We'll talk to you next time.