Artestian water and artesian wells

Maybe you've heard advertisements by water companies

wanting to sell you "artesian-well drinking water." Is this water different from other
bottled water taken from springs?
The water may not be different, but it comes to the earth's surface a bit differently.
Groundwater in aquifers between layers of poorly permeable rock, such as clay or shale,
may be confined under pressure. If such a confined aquifer is tapped by a well, water
will rise above the top of the aquifer and may even flow from the well onto the land
surface. Water confined in this way is said to be under artesian pressure, and the aquifer
is called an artesian aquifer. The word artesian comes from the town of Artois in France,
the old Roman city of Artesium, where the best known flowing artesian wells were drilled
in the Middle Ages. The level to which water will rise in tightly cased wells in artesian
aquifers is called the potentiometric surface.

Deep wells drilled into rock to intersect the water table and
reaching far below it are often called artesian wells in ordinary conversation, but this is
not necessarily a correct use of the term. Such deep wells may be just like ordinary,
shallower wells; great depth alone does not automatically make them artesian wells. The
word artesian, properly used, refers to situations where the water is confined under
pressure below layers of relatively impermeable rock. The picture to the right shows an
artesian well with the potentiometric surface being just above the land surface, but, as
the picture above shows, artesian pressure can be very strong!
Example of an aquifer system with artesian wells

The diagram below shows the aquifer system near Brunswick, Georgia, as it was before
development of the Floridan aquifer system in the 1880's. The aquifer system was under
artesian conditions and the pressure in the aquifer system was great enough that wells
flowed at land surface throughout most of the coastal area. In some areas, pressure was
high enough to elevate water to multi-story buildings without pumping. The artesian
water level (potentiometric surface) was about 65 feet above sea level at Brunswick.
Groundwater discharged naturally to springs, rivers, ponds, wetlands, and other surfacewater bodies and to the Atlantic Ocean. Nowadays, groundwater pumping has
caused the water level in the aquifer to declinethroughout the entire coastal area, with
the result that some artesian aquifers no longer have enough pressure to cause a well to
naturally flow to the land surface.

An artesian well is a pumpless water source that uses pipes to allow underground water that is under pressure to
rise to the surface. This type of well seems to defy gravity because the pressure that builds up between layers of
rock gets relieved when the water finds a path to the open air. In addition, the water has been naturally filtered
because it passes through porous rock as it seeps into the Earth to reach the aquifer, which is the underground
water source. For centuries, people have drilled artesian wells to drink filtered water that doesn't need to be
manually or mechanically hauled up from the depths.
Pressurized Water
An aquifer provides the water source for an artesian well. This is the layer of permeable rock, such as limestone or
sandstone, that absorbs water from an inlet path at high elevation, such as the top of a mountain. The water source
might be fed by snowmelt or precipitation.
Porous stone is sandwiched between a top and bottom layer of an impermeable substance, such as clay
soil or shale rock. This keeps the water pressure high, so that at a point below the entryway of the flow, there is

enough pressure to bring the water up when the pressure is released. Natural springs form in the same way when a
gap in the impermeable rock perhaps triggered by an earthquake allows the water to rise to the surface.
Sometimes, if the pressure is especially strong in the aquifer, the water might thrust up like a fountain and form a
geyser.
Prevalence
Artesian wells are found all over the world. Entire cities have relied on giant underground aquifers to provide fresh,
cold water when there are no above-ground rivers. Where modern plumbing is scarce or nonexistent, people often
must rely on an artesian well for clean water. The Great Artesian Basin, which provides fresh water to inland
Australia, is the largest such basin in the world. Thousands of artesian wells have tapped into this aquifer.
Origin
The first known artesian well was drilled in 1126 by a group of monks who used a rod with a sharp end, called a
bore, to penetrate a layer of impermeable rock to reach an aquifer. Their percussive drilling just hammering on
the end of the bore broke through the rock with sheer human force. The water that rose to the surface had
seeped through the pores of the rock, so that many contaminants have been filtered out, and it proved to be safer to
drink than standing water from the surface or river water.