Disclaimer

Well Report Data and Images released from the Department of Ecology are provided on an “AS IS” basis, without warranty of any kind.

The data and/or image(s) may not be accurate, complete, legible, or otherwise reliable

Ecology disclaims any and all warranties, whether express or implied, including (without limitation) any implied warranties or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will Ecology be liable to you or to any third party for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special or exemplary damages or loss resulting from any use or misuse of these data and/or images.

The user of this well report assumes the entire risk that the data and/or image may be inaccurate, incomplete, illegible, or otherwise reliable.

The accuracy of the well report information you see is dependent upon the knowledge, skill and care taken by each well driller completing the well report.

The information provided on the "Text Search Results" and "Map Search Results" page(s) are captured from the original well report submitted by the well driller. Although the Water Resources Program takes great pains to ensure that the data entered is correct, there may be data entry errors. The reproduction of the submitted well report in image format is available and that information takes precedence over the tabular data found on the "Text Search Results" or "Map Search Results" page(s).

Keying the information into the search engine's database also impacts its accuracy. We have tried to maintain a high level of accuracy when keying in the data. A random sample check suggests the keying accuracy to be 97.4%. Our target without paying for validation was 99%. We have also put much effort into cleaning the data before making it available. Cleaning projects began in August of 1999 and continue today. They have involved the review of ten's of thousands of records and their well report images.

Some loss of information can occur from scanning a document. Small dots that end abbreviated words or decimals that separate whole numbers from fractions can be lost as a result of scanning. If a number has a gap between its digits or if the line that boxes it has white space where a continuous line should be, then any associated numeric value should be scrutinized. Poorly scanned documents can be rescanned from the original paper if reported. Use the Contact Us page.

Well Report locations are only accurate to the nearest Township, Section and Range (TRS) using Public Land Survey (PLS) Maps. About 80% of the time the PLS location is specific to the nearest quarter section or quarter of a quarter section. Each approximate location is assigned a center point that is drawn in the section or quarter or quarter-quarter section where the well is reported to be located. These center points are called centroids. Each is represented by a small colored square on the map. Therefore, the well location data point represented on the Map Search Page does not necessarily represent the exact location of a well in Washington State. Also, because of the limited accuracy of the data, some well points on the map appear to be in water bodies when they are not.

The vast majority of the well reports are historical documents. This Well Report Search and Retrieval System presents the information as it is found on the well report form. The information (data) for the fields (i.e., attributes or data elements) on the well report is often over 99 percent complete. Approximately 99.7% of the time well reports contain Township/Section/Range (TRS) location information. However, a little less than 1% of the time well reports have TRS locations that are invalid. The Well Report Map Search Page will not show or report these logs. They may be found, however, by using the Text Search Page.

Fields with significantly less than 99% complete data include the 1/4 and 1/4x1/4 Section Data, Notice of Intent Numbers, Well Report Received Date Stamps, Driller's License Number and Well Tag IDs. Please see the section which follows labeled "Data Completeness" for specific percentages. Reasons for incomplete data on the well report vary widely. For example, Well Tag IDs are present less than 25 percent of the time. 20% of the well reports have duplicate Well Tag IDs. 70% of the time these duplicates are legitimate. The remaining 30% are being reviewed. Tax parcel numbers are rarely present before June of 1999. Another example is the Notice of Intent (NOI) Numbers that begin with a letter (e.g. W123456). These numbers have only been in existence since June of 1993. Those NOI numbers not beginning with a letter were assigned prior to June of 1993. A third example, Well Address, is often absent or the address can be very imprecise. Sometimes the well was near a specific street address. Others were near an intersection or a landmark with no other address identifier.

Out of consideration for the well owner and for reasons relating to security, the Well Address is omitted from the MS Excel or ASCII export files. Please take notice that state law states that all private citizen names and addresses may not be used for any solicitation/commercial purpose.

If at first you do not find the well report you are looking for, try another way to search for it. The system is designed to let you do many kinds of searches if you know some of the information. You can also search using only partial owner name or address information. Please see the Help for examples of how to construct successful searches.