We welcome your comments and suggestions about this site. Contaminated drinking water can transmit a variety of infectious diseases. Proper construction and maintenance of water wells, and regular water testing, can minimize your risk of becoming ill. This brochure provides a basic understanding of the risks, and steps that you as a well owner can take to protect yourself and your family from waterborne infectious disease. Examples of these diseases include diarrheas, dysenteries, salmonellosis, hepatitis, and giardiasis.
Symptoms vary, but nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, with or without fever, are most common.
All major waterborne diseases are spread the same way - by drinking water that has become contaminated by infected human or animal fecal wastes. It often takes only a small number of disease organisms to make someone sick. Contaminated drinking water can look, smell, and taste fine. Most of Minnesota's groundwater is free of disease-causing organisms, because water is filtered by upper layers of soil and rock as it soaks into the ground. To maintain this protection around wells, there must be Proper well construction, Proper well maintenance, Prompt sealing of unused wells, and Regular water testing.