Quanah-area well owners can get water screened Oct. 14, with results Oct. 15

Private well owners in six counties around Quanah can drop off water samples Oct. 14 for a bacteria, nitrate and salinity screening through the Texas Well Owner Network, according to the event announcement. The Gateway Groundwater Conservation District will pay for samples from wells inside its boundaries. At a meeting the next morning, the network will explain what the tests found.

The announcement lists collection sites in Cottle, Childress, Foard, Hardeman, King and Motley counties. Drop-off runs from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Oct. 14. The Oct. 15 session runs from 10 to 11 a.m. at Gateway Groundwater Conservation District, 223 S. Main St. in Quanah. That meeting covers results only. No samples will be taken that day.

Each sample will be tested for total coliform bacteria, E. coli, nitrate-nitrogen and salinity. The district's website names the same six counties as the ones that hold seats on its 12-member board. Cooke County is not among them, and the announcement names no collection site here.

The announcement puts the price at $15 a sample for wells outside the district. The city of Wichita Falls lists a $20 total coliform and E. coli test for private well owners at its public health laboratory, according to the city's well-water testing page. The laboratory test looks only for bacteria. The event panel also checks for nitrate-nitrogen and salinity.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises owners to test a private well at least once a year for total coliform bacteria, nitrates, total dissolved solids and pH. According to the Texas Groundwater Protection Committee, that job falls to the owner. The committee says household wells fall outside the federal and state drinking-water monitoring rules that govern public water systems. According to the committee, domestic wells also are not subject to the mandatory water-quality reporting and treatment requirements imposed on those systems.

Private wells serve about 3 million Texans, a February 2025 Texas A&M AgriLife Extension fact sheet estimates. Those users include rural households and homes on small acreage near growing cities. The Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board dates the network to 2010. According to the board, federal Clean Water Act Section 319 nonpoint-source money helped build and run the program.

The AgriLife fact sheet reports that more than half of the samples the network screened in 2024 exceeded either a health-based or a secondary water-quality standard. Those figures describe samples sent to the program. They do not measure contamination in any county. Nationwide, a U.S. Geological Survey study of household wells found about one in five with at least one contaminant above a human-health benchmark. Metals, radionuclides, nitrate and other inorganic substances crossed those benchmarks most often.

The network has worked in this area before. In March 2024 it collected samples in the same six counties, then held a results meeting the next day in Paducah and online, according to the state soil and water board. Gateway paid for in-district samples that time as well.

The Environmental Protection Agency lists flooding as a common cause of private-well contamination. The agency tells owners who suspect contamination after a disaster to ask their health department or environmental agency how to inspect and test the well.