August 20, 2026
This week’s photo is courtesy of Stewart Brothers Drilling Co.- Milan, NM, USA
Safety Focus
Part 4 of 4: Site Safety Foundations
A hazard assessment that one person does in their head fades along with that person's attention. The goal this week was never a safety form. It was a crew that looks before it works, every time. That is the standard, and standards are built on purpose.
Three things turn a good habit into a standard.
First, make it out loud and shared. The pre-task check works best as a 60-second huddle: what are we doing, what can hurt us, what are we doing about it. When the whole crew hears the hazards named, the whole crew owns them.
Second, name a competent person and back them. OSHA's construction rules (29 CFR 1926, Subpart C) require that jobsite inspections be made by a competent person, defined as someone able to identify existing and predictable hazards and authorized to take prompt corrective measures. Authority is the key word. If the person who spots the problem cannot stop the job to fix it, you do not have a competent person, you have a witness.
Third, protect the habit when it is hardest. The pre-task check is easy on a calm morning. It gets skipped when you are behind, short-handed, and the weather turned. Those are exactly the conditions where people get hurt.
That is the whole week in one line: the hazards that hurt us are often times overlooked during ordinary conditions, so the habit that protects us has to be ordinary too. Built into the culture. Now that we have discussed the foundation of site safety, we move forward and get specific. Next week we focus on silica and respirable dust, which is one of those ordinary hazards that does its damage slowly.
Key Takeaways:
• A pre-task check becomes a standard when it is spoken aloud and shared, not silent.
• OSHA requires a competent person: able to spot hazards and authorized to correct them.
• The habit matters most when you are tired, behind, and short-handed.
• Next week: silica and respirable dust.
Sources:
• OSHA: Competent Person Requirements
Knowledge Share
Part 4 of 4: How We Plan to Study the Information and What We May Need to Unlearn
We close orientation where every good course should, with how we plan to learn the information and what some of us may need to unlearn first.
Start with the misconceptions, because they get in the way. The most common one: groundwater flows in underground rivers you can find and follow. With rare exceptions, it does not. Groundwater fills and moves through the pore spaces between grains of sand and gravel and through fractures in rock, slowly, often just feet per day or less. The picture to hold is a saturated sponge, not a pipe. A second one: a well pulls water from a single fixed depth. In truth a pumping well draws down a cone of depression around itself and can pull from a wide area, which is why one heavy pumper affects the neighbors. A third: more depth always means more water. Past the productive zone, deeper can just mean more cost and worse quality.
Now the method. This series is built to be studied, not just read, so treat it that way. Keep one running notebook, digital or paper, for the whole 52 weeks. Each week, write the week's core idea in your own words. If you cannot explain drawdown or recharge to a helper in a sentence, you do not have it yet. Follow the linked sources when a topic matters to your work. They are the reading list, and the certification bodies of knowledge draw from the same references we do. And use the field around you: every hole you drill this year is a live example of something we will cover.
Terms carry the weight. When we define a word, try to lock it away in your mind, because the next week assumes it is now part of your knowledge base. Precision of language is not just preference; it is how the standards are written and how the exams are graded.
That is the end of orientation. For all the football fans, it is a bit like Week 0. Next week we start the first domain in earnest with aquifer hydraulics, beginning with the math that predicts how water moves and how much a well might yield.
What this means for your study plan: set up your notebook today, and write this week's one big idea, that nearly all our usable freshwater is underground, in your own words.
Sources:
Industry Update
Cooling Data Centers is a Hot Topic
AI and data centers are reshaping the power and water map, and groundwater is a critical part of the conversation. A new peer-reviewed study in NGWA's journal Groundwater makes a case that should interest anyone in this trade: aquifers could help cool the data centers driving the AI boom. The paper, from researchers at the Illinois State Geological Survey and the University of Illinois, lays out aquifer thermal energy storage, or ATES, as a workable option.
The problem it addresses is real. Data centers spend between 10 and 40 percent of their electricity just on cooling, and many conventional systems evaporate large volumes of water, permanently lost from the local supply. ATES works differently. It pumps cool groundwater, which sits at a near-constant temperature, through a heat exchanger to absorb heat, then returns it to the aquifer through a second well, storing the thermal energy for later use. Extraction and injection wells, in other words.
That is the part to notice. This is drilling, screens, pumps, and hydrogeology, applied to a fast-growing new customer. The study is candid that ATES needs the right conditions, adequate permeability, porosity, thickness, and depth, and that water chemistry can drive scaling and corrosion. Those are our questions to answer. As communities weigh data-center water use, groundwater professionals are positioned to be part of the solution, not just a resource being drawn down.
Industry Events
NGWA: Hydrogeology of States Webinar, Maine
August 26, 2026; Virtual Attendance
Information and Registration: NGWA Hydrogeology of States: Maine
NGWA: Advancing Women in Groundwater
August 27, 2026; Virtual Attendance
Information and Registration: NGWA Advancing Women in Groundwater
AWWA: Water Infrastructure Conference and Exposition
August 30 to September 2, 2026; Indianapolis, IN
Information and Registration: AWWA Water Infrastructure Conference
National Drilling Association: Drill Expo
September 17 to 18, 2026; Nashville, TN
Information and Registration: NDA Drill Expo
NGWA: Groundwater Week 2026
December 8 to 10, 2026; Las Vegas, NV
Information and Registration: NGWA Groundwater Week
If you have a conference, symposium, workshop, or water well related event that you would like mentioned, contact us at [email protected]
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