Help protect your spring or well water is to identify the vein or veins that are flowing to it, and where they run across your property. If it’s less than an acre or hundreds of acres, it is possible to trace them back and then map them, so down the road, if you are doing a development, or a company is, you can identify where they are and if there could be a conflict, especially if it turns out to be on top of the vein. Area’s of concern that can lead to losing the flow of water completely or a reduction of flow is, drilling rigs which is just the nature of the process with the depth they go. If you can identify where the vein is, before the hole is drilled, you might be able to persuade them to move a couple of feet away from the vein. Other areas where it can be beneficial is, if your spring or well is showing signs of contamination, you can trace the vein back and perhaps find the source point. With most springs you should be able to pick up the water vein or veins that are feeding it. With water wells this same principle applies, if your well was dowsed and the vein or veins were developed for your well. It’s a little harder to determine direction of flow with a water well vein, but a lot of water dowsers can tell you flow direction. We acquired the knowledge on how to do this by having to look at where our water veins were coming from to our developed spring. We owned and operated a bottled water operation on our property. A company contacted us over a possible contamination issues that they had and could compromise our operation. We needed to trace back our developed spring water source and try to identify if there was reason for concern. Being a threat to the companies future, we needed to identify the area that the water veins or (preferred pathways) were coming from, that fed our developed spring. We did some dowsing or (witching) around our spring and found two separate water veins feeding our spring and unfortunately one water vein was heading in the direction of the other companies property. When I walk over a water vein my L- shaped rods will go in separate directions, one will point upstream and the other downstream. If I stand over the water vein long enough, one rod will swing around and show flow direction. It doesn’t matter if the rods criss cross in an X pattern when you walk over the water vein, just make sure to flag that spot. Continue doing this until you have gone as far as you need to go or can go. General rule of thumb is, for flow direction you are usually heading uphill when tracing back water veins from a spring. The vein we traced back led through thick underbrush, so we had to keep criss crossing back and forth, over the vein every twenty feet or so, to be sure not to get sidetracked by any other water veins or underground lines, such as telephone or electrical. When we flag water veins now, we will pin flag them every 30 feet if possible. Depending on the area we are in, we can use different applications to give us a detailed satellite map with the vein marked on the map, which can be used for future development on the property. One thing we really want to emphasize is, not to place any kind of possible contaminant material on the ground over a water vein. If the contamination seeps down to the water vein, it will travel to the spring and contaminate it. In our case, we traced the water vein back almost two kilometres and were able to confirm that we had a reason for concern with the other companies contamination issue. Our company spent an enormous amount of money on principle hydrologists, water mapping and numerous water tests. The other company spent an enormous amount of money on multiple monitoring wells, piezometers, and a remediation facility, along with comprehensive water testing. In the end we were able to confirm that the water vein we traced back from our spring to their site was there. goal is to help people understand the importance of keeping springs in as pristine condition as possible. Water dowsing is the most nonintrusive way of tracking water veins. It’s been 20 years since we learned how to do this and to this day there is still no GPR (ground penetrating radar) device on the market to track these smaller water veins, so dowsing sometimes is your only option. Any questions please feel free to contact us at our email address: water@xplornet.com and direct it to Tim at Alberta Artesian Springs