Water Wells - Monitoring, Maintenance, Rehabilitation

This book forms the proceedings of a conference organised to exchange practical experience and scientific knowledge on these aspects of water wells.
Groundwater abstraction plays a very important part in water supplies throughout the world. Yet too many wells and boreholes operate inefficiently or are abondoned. Until relatively recently, very many water well operators had valuable assets in the form of groundwater abstraction works, of which they really had little idea of condition or operating efficiency. Inadequate monitoring and little if any maintenance occurred. As long as some water was gained little else seemed to matter. If a well failed for some reason, then it was often abandoned and water obtained quickly via an engineering solution varying from drilling a new well, to manipulation of other parts of the supply/distribution system. Rehabilitation, if attempted, was on a "suck-it-and-see" basis and frequently failed. Such approaches prevail in many parts of the world. Yet it must be regarded as particularly serious in developing countries where weak economies could well do without the added strain of supporting inefficient systems or where failure can simply lead to going without. The author, in this book explains how today attitudes are changing. Whereas maintenance and rehabilitation used to lack glamour, and were o