Sewage or impure drainage water should never be discharged into or upon ground draining toward a well, spring, or other source of water supply. Neither should such wastes be discharged into 'Openings in rock, an abandoned well, nor a hole, cesspool, vault, or tank so located that pollution can escape into water-bearing earth or rock. Whatever the system of sewage disposal, it should be entirely and widely separated from the water supply. Further information on locating and constructing wells is given in Farmers' Bulletin 941, "Water Systems for Farm Homes," copies of which may be had upon request to the Division of Publications, Department of Agriculture.
Enough has been said to bring home to the reader these vital points:
1. Never allow the farm sewage or excrements, even in minutest quantity, to reach the food or water of man or live stock.
2. Never expose such wastes so that they can be visited by flies or other carriers of disease germs.
3. Never use such wastes to fertilize or irrigate vegetable gardens.
4. Never discharge or throw such wastes into a stream, pond, or abandoned well, nor into a gutter, ditch, or tile drainage system, which naturally must have outlet in some watercourse.
Fig. 3.—How an apparently good well may draw foul drainage. Arrows show direction of ground water movement. A-A, Usual water table (surface of free water in the ground); B-B, water table lowered by drought and pumping from well D; C-C, water table further lowered by drought and heavy pumping; E-F, level line from surface of sewage in cesspool. Well D is safe until the water table is lowered to E; further lowering draws drainage from the cesspool and, with the water table at C-C, from the barn. The location of well G renders it unsafe always.
