03/19/2026
Thank you, WWJ, for using our picture for the cover this month!
The April 2026 issue of the National Ground Water Association's Water Well Journal focuses on water quality and water treatment and contains multiple feature articles and a column on the subjects.
The cover story is titled “Guidelines for Successful Water Well Maintenance.” Author Michael Schnieders, PG, PH-GW, stresses that successful well maintenance is proactive and features a strategy for the well system and is not about reacting to a declining performance.
Schnieders then offers guidelines that can serve as best practices for a well maintenance program designed to protect the well and sustain its performance for years. He begins by highlighting the importance of setting a baseline upon the completion of the well that can be measured going forward. He also covers properly diagnosing well fouling and using mechanical and chemical means for treatment efforts.
Mike Heatwole, MWS, contributes the feature article titled “Taste and Odor Issues in Water.” With this the subject of his Groundwater Week 2025 workshop, Heatwole looks at the causes, identification, and treatment of common taste and odor issues that he’s seeing.
Heatwole explains that taste and odor work together. Both need to function to make a proper identification. He says “we cannot have one without the other although we tend to separate them when trying to make identification and diagnosis.”
The Groundwater & Wells column by Thom Hanna, PG, continues the three-part series titled “Corrosion in Water Wells.” The second installment evaluates materials used in water wells for corrosion resistance.
Hanna states that corrosion is one of the biggest challenges to a well system’s longevity and can lead to failures, contamination, and costly repairs. He then details the corrosion characteristics of materials that are often used in water well casing and screens such as carbon steel, low carbon steel and HSLA steel as well as type 304 stainless steel and type 316 stainless steel, providing guidelines for when each will work best in a water well system.
The monthly Engineering Your Business column continues its year-long look at business topics with “Asset Management.” In it, columnist Ed Butts, PE, CPI, points out that sound asset management can be critical to a water well company’s success.
The column emphasizes prioritizing regular maintenance of assets, ensuring that critical, profit-centered equipment such as drilling rigs and pump hoists remain functional, and discusses supply chain management of stocked goods within a company. He concludes by detailing inventory control and the best methods for recording and tracking it, noting that physical inventory is “often the wild card on a firm’s balance sheet, and if inaccurate or excessive, can significantly impact the firm’s year-end profit.”
To read these articles and more, visit WaterWellJournal.com.
