What's in the well water near my property in BC?

What the answer means

Health Canada's limits

Health Canada's Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality set the most a drinking water should hold: arsenic 0.010 mg/L, fluoride 1.5 mg/L, manganese 0.12 mg/L (and 0.02 mg/L for taste and for staining laundry and fixtures), uranium 0.02 mg/L, nitrate 10 mg/L as nitrogen (45 mg/L as nitrate) and lead 0.005 mg/L, with arsenic and lead kept as low as reasonably achievable. Our summary of Health Canada's summary table, read 2026-10-11.

What a sampled well says

These are samples of raw water, before any treatment, from wells in the Province's environmental monitoring records since 2000: its observation wells and groundwater surveys, water systems' wells and other drinking-water wells; wells at landfills, mines and permit holders' works are left out. A result below the lab's detection limit counts at that limit. Lead mostly comes from a well's pipes and fittings rather than the aquifer. Groundwater changes over short distances and with depth, so a nearby well says what the aquifer can hold, not what a well on this lot gives. Bacteria aren't shown: they depend on how each well is built and kept.

Arsenic and uranium

Both come from the rock, have no taste, colour or smell, and do harm over years of drinking, not days. Neither is boiled out: boiling concentrates them. Treatment that works at the tap, such as reverse osmosis, is sold for both; test again after it's fitted.

Manganese

Over Health Canada's 0.12 mg/L limit it's a health concern, for infants most; from 0.02 mg/L it tastes metallic and stains laundry and fixtures black. Across BC's sampled wells, 575 had a sample over that taste and staining level.

Nitrate

Mostly from manure, fertiliser and septic fields reaching shallow wells, so it can change with the seasons and with what the land around the well is used for. Over the limit it's a risk for babies fed formula made with the water.

Testing your own well

Test your own well, for bacteria and these, at an accredited lab; your health authority can say which labs take samples from private wells. A buyer can make the sale subject to a water test, for quality and for how much the well gives, before removing conditions.

Our summary of Health Canada's summary table, read 2026-10-11. The Province's samples are raw water at wells it, health authorities and water systems sampled; no well is named or placed here. Confirm with an accredited lab and your health authority before you buy or build.

Source: Environmental Monitoring Data System (EnMoDS) results, Province of BC (Open Government Licence – British Columbia); Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality: summary table, Health Canada (summarised in our words); Health authority drinking water contacts, Province of BC (linked for reading).

By place

The wells sampled since 2000 in 160 places, and the wells whose median passed one of Health Canada's limits. A place not listed has no sampled well in the Province's records.

From the Province's Environmental Monitoring Data System, the results kept 2026-10-11, placed by us in each place's boundary 2026-10-12. 19 of the 1,169 wells lie on land without a place page here, reserves among them, and aren't listed. A median under the lab's detection limit is never counted as over.