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Tom DeBell

Tom DeBell

Environmental Health Engineer at Vermont Department of Health, specializing in drinking water quality and private well protection.

Jun 4, 2026

10:11
Is there anything else?
10:13
It's a great question, and it does vary a lot.
10:15
Every state I've lived in, the kind of mix of what supplies people have and kind of how they're constructed really vary.
10:22
One thing I like to always start with that, it's kind of a fun fact about Vermont, is that we're second only to Maine as far as our per capita private water usage.
10:30
So we estimate somewhere between 40 maybe up to 45% of residents are all served by these private water supplies, and that's a really difficult number to get at.
10:40
But what we do know is, like, the majority of people that are served by a private water get their water from what are typically called drilled or sometimes bored wells.
10:49
These vary anywhere from, you know, 100 feet deep to as deep as 600, 700 feet in kind of rare cases.
13:46
Were there any additional kind of downstream impacts and challenges beyond the obviously pretty significant cost challenges of possibly having to drill a new well?

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