Can you find the location of a water well in on a governmental mapping system? The answer is maybe – and it varies nationwide. A strong tension between the environmental health protection and safeguards for homeland security controls whether you will find that water well. Environmental health protection invites for more transparency in water well locations to aid vulnerability assessments from spill sites, while homeland security management invites hiding the well locations for fear that terrorist would know their locations to affect an assault. How can we balance the environmental health and security threat, and determine if we have the proper policy course? Why is there so much variance nationally?
The North Carolina mapping system as an example of where the tensions have competed, and have limited the potential of a promising public mapping service. The Public Water Supply Section of the North Carolina Department of Natural Resources maintains an interactive web map that shows water wells juxtaposed with contaminated sites.
Terradex’s stake in this discussion is toward maintaing the effectiveness of our duties of helping assure long term safety around contaminated sites. Greater transparency, or at least permission to view, would facilitate Terradex’s environmental health stewardship functions by permitting a routine view of whether water wells have been installed, or shifted from dormant to active. At Terradex, we believe the benefit to public health protection warrants reconsidering the current paradigm that favors masking well locations, and establishing a mechanism to increase transparency to those serving to protect environmental health.
