Narrator: The US Geological Survey has begun drilling
monitoring wells as part of the San Joaquin River
Restoration Program. USGS research drillers are
installing wells to monitor groundwater at several
river locations. This well is going in just south of
the river in western Fresno County. These wells will
help USGS and other agencies track groundwater
conditions near the river as the restoration flows
are released from Friant Dam.
The reason we're doing the drilling with the
San Joaquin Restoration Program is to put in a
number of well transects. These are wells ranging
from shallow wells that have reached the water table
to deeper wells that will go down deeper in the
system. This will generate an understanding of
how flow is - what the groundwater system looks
like prior to river restoration flows entering the
river and the response of the groundwater system
after restoration flows start to come through.
Narrator: Several state and federal agencies are
working on the restoration program including the
Bureau of Reclamation, the California Department of
Water Resources, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
This is the drilling of monitoring well 56 and this
well will go to a depth of 50 feet. We catch soil
samples continuously from the ground surface all the
way down to the total depth of 50 feet. And to catch
the samples we use a sampler barrel that looks like
this, this is half of it but - so they'll drive the
sampler into the ground a little over two feet and
then extract the sample out of the ground. Then they
give it to me and I retain it in the core boxes after
first photographing it. And so we get a continuous
profile of the soils from the ground surface all
the way to the bottom of the hole.
Well after they take a sample using the sampler barrel
then they auger down to the depth that the sample just
went to and then take another sample two more feet
and then auger down. So they do that continuously all
the way down to 50 feet. Once the hole reaches 50 feet
then we install a slotted pipe piezometer from ground
surface down to the bottom of the hole.
And ultimately these wells will be used also as a
monitoring tool to help look at possible ways to deal
with near-stream and off-stream potential impacts of
the restoration flows.