Even though Muggles will be everywhere, stealth is not required.
The term “Artesian Well” is named for the former province of Artois, France, where many such wells were drilled by Carthusian monks since 1126. This technique was also known much earlier in ancient Syria and Egypt. It is unknown whether the monks of Artois learned of this technique from outside sources or developed it independently on their own.
An artesian well is a well that taps into a confined aquifer (see image below). Under artesian pressure, water in the well rises above the top of the aquifer, but does not necessarily reach the land surface. A flowing artesian well is one that has been drilled into an aquifer where the pressure within the aquifer forces the groundwater to rise above the land surface naturally without using a pump. Flowing artesian wells can flow on an intermittent or continuous basis and originate from aquifers occurring in either unconsolidated materials such as sand and gravels or bedrock, at depths ranging from a few meters to several thousand meters. All flowing wells are artesian, but not all artesian wells are flowing wells.
Artesian wells have been very important to man as he settled and developed this country, as they offered a reliable source of clean water for drinking and irrigation. The water is filtered after traveling through many miles of porous sand and rock, in a process that probably took many, many years to complete. This filtering removes most of the pollutants that plague most surface runoff waters today. The readily available clean drinking water not only helps give birth to towns and cities, but also to entire industries. The water of this spring comes from the Black Warrior River aquifer of the Southeastern Coastal Plain aquifer system. Although this regional aquifer crops out only in Alabama, Mississippi, and a small part of westernmost Georgia, it is extensive in the subsurface and is the most widespread of the regional aquifers in the system. The top of the aquifer ranges from a few hundred feet above sea level in its outcrop area to about 7,000 feet below sea level in southwestern Alabama. The aquifer is absent in a wide band adjacent to the inner Coastal Plain margin in South Carolina and eastern Georgia.
The Black Warrior River aquifer consists mostly of Upper Cretaceous sand and clay that were deposited in fluvial, deltaic, and marine environments. Locally, sands of Early Cretaceous age are included in the aquifer in Alabama. The aquifer is displaced by faults in southwestern Alabama that have offset its top by as much as 500 feet. These faults do not affect the ground-water flow system, however, because they occur where the aquifer contains stagnant saltwater. About one-third of the aquifer contains water with dissolved-solids concentrations greater than 10,000 milligrams per liter.
To take credit and log this find, you must do the following:
1. Take a photo of yourself with your GPS, with the Artesian Well in the background. Post the photo with your log. (Optional)
2. Taste the water, it is potable, and describe the flavors. E-mail your answer to me via my contact link above.
3. Is this a "Flowing" or "Non-Flowing" Artesian Well? E-mail your answer to me via my contact link above.
Please do not post your answer to #2 with your log. I hope you learned something about Artesian wells today, and enjoyed this earthcache.