The murky details about private wells in Langley

The private well water network shows the location of water wells in Langley registered by residents. | Private Well Water Atlas

Hundreds of Langley Township water wells in the last decade didn’t meet Canada’s safe drinking standards when last tested. A half-dozen may have had unhealthy lead levels. But whether those problems have ever been corrected remains unclear.

Water wells in Langley Township are privately owned and not the responsibility of the municipality to maintain. The township does, however, encourage well owners to test their water quality by offering a discount to those who agree to have test results published online.

But because testing well water is voluntary, some property owners may unknowingly be consuming unsafe water.

Six water wells in the township had levels of lead greater than Canada’s safe drinking standard, according to the most recent data published by Langley Township’s Private Well Network initiative. Because the data doesn’t show the history of each well, it’s unclear if the well water was ever deemed safe.

Well owners are generally mindful of the need to test their water, said Lisa Dreves, the Langley Environmental Partners Society’s program co-ordinator. But she says the new users of private wells need to know the importance of monitoring their water’s safety.

“The concern is people that are coming in [as] new farmers or just big landowners that might not know that they need to be testing their wells.”

There are many contaminants to test for. In South Langley, for instance, there are “pretty high” levels of arsenic, Dreves said. Other areas have other contaminants of concern.

“The problems vary all over Langley, mostly because the depth of the wells vary all over Langley… you could have one person that has absolutely no problems and their neighbour has a problem, but it’s because they’ve tapped into a different layer of the substrate and they’re drawing up different groundwater.”

Most residents are serviced by the township, which obtains water from the Greater Vancouver Water District and nine groundwater wells—primarily in Aldergrove. The district provided 70% of the township’s water supply and groundwater accounted for the remainder, according to the 2021 annual water report.

The township also operates an additional five wells in Brookswood and Murrayville that were temporarily taken offline in 2019 after ongoing issues of discoloured water. Staff are still waiting for council to decide on the future of those wells, Aaron Ruhl, director of public works, told The Current.

The township-owned Fort Langley water well was shut down last fall. | Google

Last fall, council shut down a township-owned Fort Langley well that was also plagued with issues. There are no other township-managed wells in that neighbourhood, Ruhl said. (Details about the township’s water quality and test results can be found in its annual report here.)

“We meet all the provincial and federal guidelines for any testing,” Ruhl said.

But although public water systems are tested regularly, that’s not the case for those who rely on their own private wells.

Dreves said it is recommended that well owners submit water samples each year. If the results come back with no issues, the owner won’t likely need to think about it for another year. But if it doesn’t, the price tag can be costly.

“The onus is on the landowner to make sure that their water quality is good.”

There are guidelines in place to protect groundwater. Livestock, for example, should be at least 30 metres from any watercourse and not have access to natural watercourses or riparian areas; although regulations aren’t always foolproof and they aren’t always followed.

More recently, the agriculture environmental management code was updated to mandate well water registration. But there’s still nothing that says residents need to submit samples, Dreves said.

A lack of testing carries a risk of harming human health. If test samples from the private network are never made public, then decision-makers, new property owners, and renters are left uninformed about the history of the condition of the water supply.

“People could get pretty sick.”

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