NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIVATE WELL WATER DASHBOARD: A USER-FRIENDLY MAPPING TOOL PUTTING DATA INTO ACTION TO INCREASE PRIVATE WELL TESTING AND TREATMENT

Around forty-six percent of homes in New Hampshire (NH) use private wells. Well owners are responsible for testing and treating their drinking water. Many NH wells have high levels of naturally occurring arsenic and other contaminants of concern due to the underlying bedrock. Private well users, policymakers, and environmental health professionals need to have access to actionable well water quality data to encourage testing and treatment of well water and ultimately reduce exposure to harmful contaminants.

In order to address this need, the NH Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) program within the NH Department of Health and Human Services Division of Public Health Services worked collaboratively with the NH Public Health Laboratory and the NH Department of Environmental Services Groundwater and Drinking Water Bureau to compile private well water quality data from 2006-2020 for the 14 most common groundwater contaminants. NH EPHT summarized these data and created an online Private Well Water Dashboard in order to centralize private well water data, improve understanding of high-risk areas across the state, and encourage private well users to test their water.

The Dashboard contains summary statistics of water quality testing, exceedance rates of drinking water standards, and estimates of the number of people served by private wells at the town and county scale. Summary data based on USGS arsenic probability modeling (Ayotte et al., 2012) and data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS 2017) survey related to well testing behavior are also included to provide a more complete picture of well water quality issues in NH.

This presentation will include a discussion of methods and data limitations as well as a demonstration of how the Dashboard can be used to identify high-risk areas, encourage well testing, and reduce exposure to harmful contaminants. This project contributes to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) National EPHT network, which connects communities, public health professionals, policy makers, state agencies, and others to the data they need. Additional funding is provided by the CDC’s Environmental Health Capacity grant to detect, prevent, and control environmental health hazards through data-driven, evidence-based approaches.