Kingfish — Water

How a water well works in Louisiana, and who has to report one

Bentley Hensel — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:03:18 GMT

More than 90,000 private water wells operate in Louisiana, by the Health Department's own count. The state knows where most of them are because two people have to file paperwork when one goes in. After that, for most wells in most of the state, the record stops. This is how the system works, and where it ends.

The short version

A well generates two filings by two different people. The owner files a notification. The driller files a registration.
Neither is a permit. Outside a designated critical area, the state's only power over an ordinary well is to fix its spacing.
The driller's duty applies to every water well in Louisiana, "regardless of yield or use," including a backyard well.
Monthly pumping reports are required in three north Louisiana areas and the Baton Rouge district. Central Louisiana is in neither.
Nobody has to test a private well after the first bacteriological sample. Not the owner, not the state.
A homeowner may legally drill his own well. The exemption is from licensing, not from reporting.

The two filings

The word "registration" appears in both the statute and the rules, describing different documents. Getting them straight is most of the work.

The owner files a notification. R.S. 38:3097.3(C)(4)(a) directs the state to require registration of new wells by owners, and defines that as "a notice of intent to drill submitted to the secretary at least sixty days prior to drilling the well." The form is GWR-01. For six use types — dewatering, frac water supply, industrial, irrigation, power generation, and public supply — it goes in 60 days before drilling.

Four types file afterward instead, within 60 days of installation: domestic wells, replacement wells, drilling rig supply, and drought relief. Drought relief also needs the secretary's approval first.

The driller files a registration. LAC 56:I.105.A puts this on "the contractor who drills or constructs a well or hole," within 30 days of completion, on Form DNR-GW-1. A well counts as complete when the owner accepts it or the rig leaves the site, whichever comes first.

Three categories escape registration entirely: wells producing saline water in connection with oil or gas production, wells driven or dug by hand auger, and geotechnical boreholes.

So an irrigation well produces two documents from two parties on two clocks. A domestic well produces one from the driller, which the owner may elect to have satisfy his own obligation.

What the state can do about it

A notification is not an application, and the response is not an approval. After a notification arrives, the secretary has 30 days to place restrictions, ask for more information, or do nothing. What he may restrict depends on where the well is and how big it is.

For large volume wells — an eight-inch-or-greater screen, or a frac-supply well the agency finds capable of 1,500 gallons a minute — and for wells inside a critical area of ground water concern, the state may fix allowable production, spacing, and metering.

For everything else, the statute is one sentence long: an order "may only fix spacing of the well."

Louisiana has designated areas of ground water concern. It has not designated any critical areas. The difference between those two words decides whether the state can limit how much water comes out of the ground.

Where the reporting is

Order AGC-1-05, signed August 15, 2005, declared areas of ground water concern in the Sparta Aquifer around three pumping centers: Monroe, Jonesboro-Hodge, and Ruston. Owners of non-domestic wells inside those areas file a monthly ground water usage report — volume pumped, purpose, and static water level where they have it — within 60 days of the end of each month.

The Capital Area Groundwater Conservation District runs a separate regime for East and West Baton Rouge, East and West Feliciana, Pointe Coupee, and Ascension, with its own pumpage reporting and fees.

Everywhere else, including all of central Louisiana, a well owner files a notification and a registration and then files nothing further, whatever the well produces.

Penalties

R.S. 38:3097.3(F)(2) sets them per day of violation.

Violation	First	Second	Third and after
Failing to register within 60 days of completion	$0–50	$50–100	$100–500
Failing to give 60 days' notice of intent to drill	$0–200	$200–400	$400–1,000
Giving no notice before drilling	$500	$1,000	$2,500
Failing to comply with a restriction order	$1,000	$2,500	$5,000
Failing to comply with a ground water emergency order	$1,000	$2,500	$5,000

Filing late costs very little. Drilling with no notice at all starts at a flat $500 and rises fivefold by the third offense. Separately, falsifying a required report is a criminal matter under R.S. 38:3095 — up to $5,000, six months, or both, prosecuted by the district attorney.

The well itself

Every part below is prescribed by LAC 56:I, Chapter 3.

A test hole comes first, drilled to the base of the fresh water. It establishes the depth and thickness of the water-bearing sands, produces the cuttings that determine screen slot size, and supplies the water quality data used to size the pump.

Casing holds the hole open, houses the pump, carries the water up, and seals off bad water. It must project at least a foot above ground, pump-house floor, or slab.

The screen is the intake. Slot size comes from a mechanical analysis of the formation samples. Entrance velocity should stay under 0.1 foot per second, the figure that governs both sanding and encrustation. Lengthening the screen raises yield faster than widening the well.

Gravel pack goes in where the sand is fine or thinly bedded, to increase permeability around the screen and cut entrance velocity. Limestone and shale are prohibited as pack material.

The annular seal is the part that decides whether the well is safe. A cement-bentonite slurry pumped from the bottom up fills the gap between the casing and the borehole, keeping surface contamination out of the aquifer and stopping water from moving between aquifers.

How deep that seal has to run is the clearest statement Louisiana makes about whose water it is protecting:

Well type	Cemented from
Community public supply	Full depth — top of the producing aquifer to the surface
Industrial, power generation	Full depth
Noncommunity public supply	50 feet to surface
Observation, rig supply, dewatering	50 feet to surface
Monitoring	Entire casing length
Domestic	10 feet to surface
Irrigation, agricultural	10 feet to surface

A well serving a subdivision is sealed the whole way down. A well serving a house is sealed for ten feet.

Setbacks under LAC 56:I.315: 50 feet from a septic tank; 100 feet from cesspools, privies, oxidation ponds, absorption fields and pits, reducible to 50 for a domestic well; 100 feet from landfills, feed lots, and manure piles; 50 feet from a drainage canal, ditch, stream, pond, or lake; and 25 feet from another water well. The rule concedes in its own text that the 25-foot figure "does not take into consideration the effects of interference from pumping nearby wells in the same aquifer."

Testing

The Health Department's Private Well Initiative states the position plainly: "The Department of Health (LDH) is only required to test and check public water systems. Well owners are responsible for checking and testing their water supply."

One test is mandatory, at the beginning. LAC 56:I.331.F.4 requires every new well, and any repaired well, to be disinfected before use, and requires a negative bacteriological analysis for all public supply and domestic wells from the Office of Public Health or a state-certified lab.

Nothing requires a second one. A well drilled in 1994 and never sampled since is in full compliance.

If you drill your own

R.S. 38:3098(C) allows an unlicensed person to construct a well on his own or leased property for a single-family house that is his permanent residence, or for watering livestock on his farm, so long as the water is not for public use or any other residence. The same subsection adds that "such person shall comply with all rules and regulations as to the construction of wells."

That exemption covers licensing. It says nothing about the notification and registration duties, which attach to the owner and the contractor. A homeowner who drills his own well is both.

The agency moved, and the paperwork has not caught up

Acts 2025, No. 458 took effect October 1, 2025. It renamed the department, folded the Office of Conservation into a Water Administration Division of the Department of Conservation and Energy, and moved driller licensing to the State Licensing Board for Contractors.

The published guidance did not follow. LAC 43:VI.701.A still tells readers to register new wells "through the Department of Transportation and Development" — an agency that lost the function on January 1, 2010. LAC 56:I.101 still credits DOTD's Office of Public Works. Both rule sets still say "commissioner" and "Office of Conservation" throughout. The Health Department's private-well page still routes readers to the old office. Anyone following the state's own instructions is sent to two agencies that no longer do this.

How to look up a well

Get the Groundwater Resources well number if you have it. It is assigned in the state's acknowledgment letter and belongs on the registration form.
Search SONRIS, the state database, at sonlite.dnr.state.la.us.
Ask for the right document. A notification is the owner's filing and shows intent. A registration is the driller's and shows what was built. For depth, screen interval, and aquifer, you want the registration. Those are found on the Documents portal.
Contact the Water Administration Division at gwater@la.gov or (225) 342-8244.
For your own well's water quality, contact LDH's Private Well Initiative or a state-certified lab. Nobody will do it for you.

Accountability box: water wells in Louisiana

What governs them: R.S. 38:3091–3098.8; LAC 56:I (construction and registration); LAC 43:VI (notification).
Who regulates: Water Administration Division, Department of Conservation and Energy, since October 1, 2025. Driller licensing sits with the State Licensing Board for Contractors.
Who files: the owner, before or shortly after drilling depending on use type; the driller, within 30 days of completion.
What the state may impose: spacing, on an ordinary well. Production limits and metering only for large-volume wells or wells in a critical area — of which Louisiana currently has none.
Ongoing reporting: monthly, for non-domestic wells in the Sparta areas around Monroe, Jonesboro-Hodge, and Ruston, and in the Capital Area district. Nowhere else.
Water quality testing: one bacteriological test before use. None required after.
Where the records live: SONRIS.

Louisiana counts its wells carefully at the moment they are drilled and stops counting immediately afterward. For a homeowner, that means the water is his problem permanently. For an industrial user in a parish with no reporting requirement, it means the volume coming out of the ground is a number the state never asks for.

Spot an error? Receipts welcome: tips@kingfish.la.

Sources

R.S. 38:3094 · R.S. 38:3097.3 · R.S. 38:3098
LAC 56:I — water well construction, registration, and standards
LAC 43:VI — water well notification
Department of Conservation and Energy — Water Administration · SONRIS
Acts 2025, No. 458, effective Oct. 1, 2025 (reorganization)

What is the Rapides Island Water Association?

Bentley Hensel — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:48:35 GMT

Most people who get their water from the Rapides Island Water Association have never been to a board meeting, don't know where the water comes from, and couldn't say who owns the pipe in the yard. That isn't a criticism. It's how a utility is supposed to work. You turn the handle, water comes out.

But RIWA is not a city utility and it is not a company. It is a member-owned nonprofit cooperative, founded in 1972, run by an unpaid board elected from the people it serves, rebuilt with federal money, and documented in a stack of public records almost nobody reads. If you are a customer, you are an owner.

Here is what those records say.

The short version

RIWA is a member-owned rural water cooperative serving 5,658 people through 1,886 service connections west and north of Alexandria, out of an office in Boyce.
It does not pump all its own water. The co-op runs five wells and also buys finished water from the City of Alexandria at two connections.
The state gave it an A — 105 out of 100 — in both 2024 and 2025, with zero deductions in all seven categories. EPA's national database lists no violations.
Its own annual water quality report carries a federally required warning: fluoride above 2.0 mg/L, and children under nine should be given another source of drinking water.
It has run an operating deficit for four straight years — about $228,000 in the year ending September 2024 — while carrying roughly $4.5 million in federal debt from the rebuild that earned it a state award.
Nobody sets its rates but its own board. Not the Public Service Commission.

Fast facts


Legal name	Rapides Island Water Association, Inc.
Type	Member-owned rural water cooperative; IRS 501(c)(12)
Founded	1972
Office	500-B Ulster Ave. / P.O. Box 458, Boyce, LA 71409
Phone	(318) 793-4812
Website	rapidesislandwater.com
Public Water System ID	LA1079020
EIN	72-0976331
People served	5,658
Service connections	1,886
Water source	Five wells, plus purchased water from the City of Alexandria
2025 state water grade	A (105/100)
Primary regulator	Louisiana Department of Health, Safe Drinking Water Program

Population and connection counts are EPA's Safe Drinking Water Information System figures for LA1079020.

The name, and the territory

"Rapides Island" is the low ground west and north of Alexandria, bounded by the Red River and its old channels — rural without being remote. The service area threads out from Boyce along the highways and parish roads, toward Twin Bridges and out Highway 28, to the edge of where the City of Alexandria's own system stops.

Those boundaries are not informal. Rural water associations file service-area descriptions of record, and where a federally indebted co-op's territory ends turns out to matter a great deal — see the section on federal debt below.

Where the water actually comes from

This is the part the co-op's own website doesn't answer, and the part most customers get wrong.

RIWA is a groundwater system, but it is not a self-contained one. Its 2024 Consumer Confidence Report lists seven sources: Wells 4, 5, 6 (Shuler Road), 7 and 8 — and two purchase connections, "buys from LA1079001" at McKeithen Drive and at Twin Bridges. LA1079001 is the City of Alexandria. EPA's facility inventory for the system confirms both connections as active, and adds a third, inactive emergency tie to Alexandria on Highway 28 and an emergency connection to the Town of Boyce.

So a meaningful share of the water in these pipes is finished city water, bought wholesale. That single fact links a small independent co-op's supply to the operating condition of a municipal utility it does not control and cannot vote on — which is worth knowing before the next time Alexandria's system has a bad week.

There is no river intake, no surface reservoir, and no treatment plant in the sense a city has one. Groundwater is disinfected, stored, and pumped. That design is cheap, reliable and typical for rural Louisiana.

The wells draw the aquifer system underneath central Rapides Parish. USGS identifies the Carnahan Bayou unit of the Jasper aquifer system as one of the principal freshwater sources in this part of the parish, and reports that water from it is generally moderately hard and, manganese aside, generally within secondary drinking-water standards. We have not confirmed from the state well registry which unit each RIWA well is screened in, or at what depth, and we are not going to print numbers we haven't pulled.

The Legislative Auditor's statewide review, Louisiana's Management of Water Resources, is the best single primer on why "who is pumping how much, from where" is a genuinely hard question to answer in this state.

The report card

Since Act 98 of the 2021 Regular Session, the Louisiana Department of Health issues every community water system an annual letter grade — the first program of its kind in the country, as national coverage noted at the time. Systems are scored against seven standards and must publish the grade in their annual water quality report.

RIWA's 2025 water grade is an A: 105 out of 100. Its 2024 grade was identical. Both years, the score sheet is clean straight down:

Standard	Max deduction	RIWA
Federal water quality	−30	−0
State water quality	−10	−0
Financial sustainability	−10	−0
Operations & maintenance	−15	−0
Infrastructure	−20	−0
Customer satisfaction	−10	−0
Secondary contaminants	−5	−0
Bonus (asset management, well and storage programs, training)	+10	+5

You can score above 100 because of that bonus line. RIWA took no deductions at all and earned half the available bonus, which is how a system lands at 105 percent.

The detail pages are worth reading rather than the letter alone: no maximum-contaminant-level violations, no Lead and Copper treatment-technique violations, no administrative order, no chlorine violations, no boil notices or outages, a licensed operator on staff, an acceptable rate study, an acceptable audit, no fiscal administrator, no unresolved deficiencies, and a complaint log filed.

That is a very good report card, and it should be said plainly: on the measures the state actually grades, this co-op is running a tight system. Separately, EPA's national compliance database returns no violations for LA1079020 — while the city system it buys from, LA1079001, carries six, two of them health-based. Note that SDWA data in ECHO lags by about a quarter, so neither figure is real-time.

The fluoride notice

One thing the letter grade does not capture, and the co-op's own annual report does.

The 2024 Consumer Confidence Report reproduces EPA's required health-effects language for fluoride:

The drinking water provided by your community water system has a fluoride concentration greater than 2.0 mg/L. ... Children under nine (9) should be provided with alternative sources of drinking water or water that has been treated to remove the fluoride to avoid the possibility of staining and pitting of their permanent teeth.

The measured numbers behind that notice: treated water at 2.3 ppm on Aug. 27, 2024, ranging 2.2 to 2.3. The 2023 report flagged "fluoride exceed secondary contaminant level." The 2022 report recorded 2.3 ppm in RIWA's own water and 2.4 ppm in the water purchased from Alexandria.

Three things have to be said together, because leaving any one out would mislead:

This is not a violation. The federal enforceable limit — the maximum contaminant level — is 4.0 ppm, and the co-op is well under it. The 2.0 mg/L threshold is a secondary standard, about cosmetic tooth staining, not a health-based one. That is why the state's grade sheet shows no deduction.
It appears to be natural, not added. The source water sample taken Dec. 17, 2023 already reads 2.2 ppm — before treatment. Fluoride at that level coming out of the ground points to the aquifer, not to anything the co-op is putting in.
It still matters to parents. The consequence in the notice is real and permanent, and it applies to a specific group: children under nine. A family that has never opened a Consumer Confidence Report has no way to know.

That last point is the whole reason this guide exists. The information is published, correct, and effectively invisible.

What they built

The co-op has not been standing still. Between roughly 2018 and 2020 it completed more than $6 million in improvements to what was then a 48-year-old system, financed through a USDA Rural Utilities Service loan and grant package: a new well, an elevated storage tank, two ground storage tanks, a unified control system, about 10 miles of new water mains with hydrants, upgrades to four booster stations, drive-by radio-read meters, generators, and main replacement in the Kincaid/Amelia Drive area.

That program is why the Louisiana Rural Water Association named RIWA its Water System of the Year for the northern part of the state in 2019. For a system this size it is a substantial body of work.

It is also the origin of the debt.

The money

Small rural water systems in Louisiana live in a permanent squeeze: federal loans build the infrastructure, but the rate base is thin, the pipe is long, and there are few customers per mile. RIWA's federal filings show exactly what that looks like on paper.

The co-op files an IRS Form 990 each year, and those are public. Its fiscal year ends September 30.

FY	Revenue	Expenses	Result	Total liabilities
2018	$780,450	$637,560	+$142,890	$104,794
2019	$1,166,990	$887,811	+$279,179	$5,127,902
2020	$1,876,355	$1,067,184	+$809,171	$4,975,158
2021	$1,125,323	$1,180,473	−$55,150	$4,847,835
2022	$1,055,026	$1,324,889	−$269,863	$4,761,538
2023	$1,059,455	$1,269,671	−$210,216	$4,689,631
2024	$1,064,205	$1,292,361	−$228,156	$4,593,110

Source: IRS Forms 990, EIN 72-0976331, via ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer.

Read the liabilities column first. In a single fiscal year the co-op went from a nearly debt-free $2.6 million system to a $7.9 million system carrying $5.1 million in federal debt. That is the rebuild, and it is doing what it was supposed to do — total liabilities have come down every year since, to about $4.59 million at the end of FY2024, of which $4.50 million is secured notes and mortgages.

Now read the revenue column. It has barely moved: $1.055 million in 2022, $1.064 million in 2024 — under one percent in three years. Expenses have run between $1.27 million and $1.32 million throughout. The result is four consecutive years in the red, most recently about $228,000.

One important caveat, stated up front. A paper deficit is not the same as running out of cash. A system that just capitalized roughly $6 million in new assets carries a large depreciation charge against income every year afterward, and depreciation is a bookkeeping entry, not a check anybody writes. The summary 990 data does not break that line out. The audited financial statements do — and that is where a reader who wants the cash picture should go, not here.

The regulator's own read supports caution before alarm: LDH scored financial sustainability at zero deductions in both 2024 and 2025, recording an acceptable rate study, an acceptable audit on file, and no fiscal administrator appointed for poor financial management.

Two structural facts shape all of it:

USDA debt. The improvements were financed under Section 306 of the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act, 7 U.S.C. § 1926. Ratepayers retire that debt over decades.
Rates are set by the board. RIWA is not regulated by the Louisiana Public Service Commission. That is local control, but it also means a rate increase is a decision neighbors make about neighbors, which is exactly as comfortable as it sounds.

You can read the books. Under Louisiana audit law, R.S. 24:513, the Legislative Auditor has authority to examine or review the financial statements of private water supply systems receiving local or state assistance. Search the entity name in the LLA's public reports database and read the balance sheet and the auditor's findings yourself. Very few people ever do.

Who runs it

RIWA is governed by an unpaid board of directors elected from the membership, with day-to-day work handled by a small staff. As listed on the co-op's board members page:

Tracy Breithaupt — President
Joel Mathews — Vice President
Ronnie Venson
Jeff DeKeyzer
Donna Turnage
David Gill
Darron Rachal

The board meets at 8 a.m. on the third Tuesday of each month, and the annual meeting of the members is at 5 p.m. on the first Tuesday in December.

Write those down. As a cooperative, RIWA is not a public body subject to the Open Meetings Law the way a police jury is — but its members are its owners, and the annual meeting is the one night a year the ownership is in the room. The practical route to influence runs through that room: attend, ask for the financial report, run for a seat.

Engineering has come from outside firms rather than staff. The co-op's account of the 2020 project credits Heath McGuffee of Meyer, Meyer, LaCroix & Hixson.

Who regulates it

This trips people up constantly, so, plainly:

Water quality and system operations — the Louisiana Department of Health, Safe Drinking Water Program. LDH holds primacy under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and supervises more than 1,200 public water systems statewide. Boil advisories, sampling, and enforcement run through LDH.
Finances — the Louisiana Legislative Auditor, under the private-water-system provision above.
Federal loans and grants — USDA Rural Development.
Rates — the co-op's own board. Not the Public Service Commission.
Federal drinking water standards — U.S. EPA, through LDH as the primacy agency.

The Act 98 grading program also requires every system to submit a rate study, annual and financial reports, a flushing plan, and a customer complaint log to LDH each January. Which is why "we're doing a rate study" is often less a local initiative than a state requirement coming due.

A note on 501(c)(12)

RIWA's federal tax status is not the familiar charity category. It files as a 501(c)(12) — the section covering mutual and cooperative utility companies, the same one that carries rural electric and telephone co-ops.

The defining condition of that section is the 85 percent member-income test: to keep the exemption, at least 85 percent of the organization's income has to come from members, collected for the sole purpose of meeting losses and expenses. It is a legal structure built on the assumption that the customers and the owners are the same people, and that the enterprise is not supposed to make money off them.

That is the frame for everything above. The deficits, the flat revenue, the board-set rates and the volunteer directors are not incidental features of how RIWA is run. They are what the corporate form is.

Why federal debt shapes the map

Here is the piece almost nobody outside the water business knows, and it explains a great deal about how rural systems behave.

Under 7 U.S.C. § 1926(b), while a rural water association carries outstanding USDA debt, no municipality or competing provider may curtail or limit the service it provides — including by annexation. Congress wrote the provision to stop cities from annexing the profitable customers out of a federally financed rural system and leaving the debt behind.

Courts have distilled it to a short test: the association must have continuing indebtedness to the USDA, and must have provided or made service available to the disputed area. Where both hold, the protection is strong and doubts are generally resolved in the indebted system's favor. The Tenth Circuit's Deer Creek line of cases is a good entry point, and practitioners keep a running index of § 1926(b) litigation.

For a co-op like RIWA — $4.5 million still owed, and a service territory abutting a growing city it also buys water from — that federal debt is simultaneously its heaviest burden and its strongest legal shield.

How to check your own water in five minutes

You do not have to take our word for any of this. All of it is free and public.

Your Consumer Confidence Report. Every community water system publishes one annually, listing sources, detections, and violations. Start at LDH's drinking water quality page, or read RIWA's 2024 report directly.
Your water grade. Pull the one-page report card from LDH's water grade program. Grades are filed by parish and PWSID.
EPA SDWIS. Search the system ID — LA1079020 — at Envirofacts for inventory, violations, and enforcement history.
EPA ECHO. Compliance history against systems nationwide, with the quarterly lag noted.
The 990s and the audits. Read the federal filings at ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer and search the entity name in the Legislative Auditor's database.

The co-op's own rates, forms and notices are posted under forms and reports and recent news.

Accountability box: Rapides Island Water Association, Inc.

What it is: A member-owned nonprofit rural water cooperative, IRS 501(c)(12), founded 1972, serving 5,658 people through 1,886 connections west and north of Alexandria.
Who runs it: Seven unpaid directors elected by the membership; Tracy Breithaupt, president. A licensed operator and office staff handle daily operations.
Who elects them: The members — meaning the customers.
Water source: Five wells plus purchased water from the City of Alexandria at two connections.
Money: $1.06 million revenue against $1.29 million expenses in FY2024, an operating gap of about $228,000; $4.59 million total liabilities, $4.50 million of it secured federal debt; $2.79 million net assets.
Quality record: State grade A (105/100) in 2024 and 2025; no violations listed in EPA's national database; a standing fluoride notice affecting children under nine.
When and where it meets: Board, 8 a.m. the third Tuesday monthly. Annual members' meeting, 5 p.m. the first Tuesday in December. 500-B Ulster Ave., Boyce.
How to reach it: P.O. Box 458, Boyce, LA 71409; (318) 793-4812; office hours 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday–Friday.

Rapides Island Water Association is a fifty-year-old, member-owned, federally financed cooperative that pumps and buys water for about 5,700 people around Boyce. It rebuilt most of its system with USDA money, won a state award for it, and has earned the state's top grade two years running. It is also spending more than it collects, carrying $4.5 million in federal debt, and publishing a fluoride warning that most of the parents it applies to have never read.

All of that is true at once, and all of it is public. It is exactly the sort of institution that shapes daily life for thousands of people and gets no attention at all until something goes wrong.

Spot an error? Receipts welcome: tips@kingfish.la.

Sources and further reading

Applied Digital has two unregistered water wells at its data center

Bentley Hensel — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:59:39 GMT

📝

Disclosure: The Kingfish Project took the aerial photographs with help from Save My Louisiana. The group is a 501(c)(4) citizen volunteer organization whose stated mission is educating Louisiana citizens to defend their constitutional rights and their environment.

Applied Digital told KALB in June that its Delta Forge 1 data center near Boyce would use 1,200 to 4,800 gallons of utility water a day for "office-type" uses, plus a one-time cooling-loop fill of about 1.7 million gallons. The state's announcement of the project in May touted "proprietary waterless cooling." Neither mentioned the two wells that had been pumping groundwater at the site since April. In written answers on August 12, the company put their production at about 12 million gallons. The company says those figures describe the finished data center rather than the construction.

Detailed water records were withheld from KALB as trade secrets. Louisiana requires no meter and no usage report for an industrial well in Rapides Parish. The filing that would have put these wells into a record a citizen can search is the registration their driller owed the state within 30 days of finishing them, and it has not arrived.

On August 7, the state office that maintains Louisiana's groundwater records answered a written question about those wells: it "does not appear that the proposed wells have been installed at this time." The Kingfish Project photographed both finished wellheads from the air on July 30, standing at the coordinates the company's driller filed with the state in March.

Both accounts describe the same two wells, 40-0252 and 40-0253, notified to the state on March 31, 2026, acknowledged on April 6, and drilled that month. The notification forms put their combined pumping capacity at 594,000 gallons per day and estimated completion by May 31. Applied Digital says both wells were finished between April 9 and April 21.

The company's dates set the filing deadline for the second and third weeks of May, about eleven weeks before the state's August 7 answer. Asked why nothing has reached the state, Applied Digital said the registration filings "have been made by the contractor." A SONRIS search on the morning of publication returned no registration for either well.

The paper trail

The wells entered the record on the morning of March 31. At 10:26 and 10:30 a.m., R.A.M. Drilling, LLC of Bunkie called in two Louisiana 811 locate tickets (260214966, 260214988) for "WATER WELL DRILLING" at James Road and State Highway 121 in Boyce, work "being done for APPLIED DIGITAL," work to begin April 6. The same day, driller Alan Miller signed two state notification forms for the wells' owner of record, Applied Digital of Dallas. Well #1: four-inch casing, 120 feet deep, "Pumping Rate (Gallons Per Day): 144,000." Well #2: eight-inch casing, 120 feet deep, 450,000 gallons per day. Both list up to 200 pumping days a year and an estimated completion date of May 31, 2026.

The state's Office of Permitting and Compliance wrote back on April 6, assigned the well numbers, and found the proposed withdrawal "should not adversely affect water withdrawal from other registered water wells in the area or to the sustainability of the aquifer." Rapides Parish sits outside Louisiana's designated groundwater areas, so that letter is the only review these wells get. The driller often files the notification on the owner's behalf.

On July 30, we photographed the site from the air and plotted the forms' coordinates onto the frames.

The Site

The equipment yard holds both wells; the row of white tanks about a quarter-mile away is the water storage and lime operation.

Applied Digital's Delta Forge 1 data center site under construction along Interstate 49 near Boyce, seen from the air July 30, 2026. The equipment yard holds the site's two water wells; it and the water-storage and lime operation sit along the haul road as crews stabilize soil across the 672-acre tract.

The Wells

Insets A and B enlarge the two installations, plotted from the coordinates on the notification forms: Well #1, 40-0252, notified at 144,000 gallons per day, and Well #2, 40-0253, notified at 450,000. Both are finished wellheads, and no drilling equipment appears anywhere in the frame.

The two finished wellheads at Delta Forge 1 on July 30, 2026, enlarged in insets A and B and plotted from the coordinates on the state notification forms.

The Corridor

The dashed line is our annotation, drawn along ground marks running between the wells and the tank row.

A water line emerges at the edge of the equipment yard, near the site's two wells, and runs to the storage tanks supplying water trucks and the lime-slurry operation at Delta Forge 1, July 30, 2026.

The Fill Point

A tanker truck loads at the stand beside the row of water storage tanks.

A water truck fills at the fill point beside a bank of storage tanks at Applied Digital's Delta Forge 1 site near Boyce on July 30, 2026. The tanks supply the trucks and lime-slurry operation used for soil stabilization across the site; a section of the water line feeding the tanks is visible at upper right.

The other water source

Rapides Island Water Association serves the property through a residential connection, and the water it delivers goes to the house on the tract for ordinary household use rather than to bulk fill for trucks. The tanks that supply the trucks and the lime-slurry rig sit at the end of the line that runs from the equipment yard, where both wells stand.

The Lime Operation

Dry-bulk trailers work beside the water tanks, dust rising off the white residue on the pad. The company began delivering lime as a water-based slurry after receiving a dust citation in May.

Water storage tanks and lime-slurry equipment at the center of Delta Forge 1's soil-stabilization operation, July 30, 2026. After a state dust citation in May, the site's general contractor told regulators it had switched from spreading dry lime to delivering it in a water-based slurry to keep dust down.

Then we searched SONRIS (Direct Search), the state database where every registered well appears. For industrial wells completed in Rapides Parish in the past six months, the search returns one record: a well at Cabrini Hospital. We asked the state's groundwater office whether we were reading its search wrong. Nicole R. Hall, a professional geologist with the Department of Conservation and Energy, reviewed the office's files and replied within two days: "My search results were the same as yours."

Eleven quiet weeks

Governor Landry announced the $3.6 billion campus on May 26. The wells were filed in March and finished in April, and the deadline to register them passed before he spoke.

Date	Event
March 31	Notifications filed; both 811 tickets called in
April 6	State acknowledges the wells; 811 work window opens
April 9–21	Wells completed, per Applied Digital
April 26	811 tickets expire
May 9–21	Registration deadline, 30 days from completion
May 26	Governor announces the project
July 30	Kingfish photographs completed installations at both locations
August 7	State: no registrations received; wells appear uninstalled
August 12	Company: about 12 million gallons pumped; filings "made by the contractor"

The water figures the public got

Applied Digital says the wells are used "solely for dust mitigation and lime slurry mixing for construction." The 12 million gallons the company reported on August 12 is the first public number for the water already coming out of the ground at Delta Forge 1: about seven times the one-time cooling fill it disclosed, and, spread across the days since the wells came online, an average near 100,000 gallons a day. The top daily figure it gave KALB was 4,800.

The wells' combined notified rate of 594,000 gallons per day would fill the cooling loop from the ground in under three days. A notified rate is an estimated maximum on a form. What the wells have pumped since spring rests on the company's word.

The missing registration

Hall's August 7 email, in full on this point:

The water well notifications for GWR IDs 40-0252, 40-0253, and 40-0255 were approved, but it does not appear that the proposed wells have been installed at this time. There is no timeframe in which the wells must be installed after our office approves the notifications. The driller is required to submit the water well registration(s) within 30 days of completing the well(s), but our office has not received registrations for any of the proposed wells from the notifications to date.

The third number, 40-0255, belongs to a concrete supplier's well that R.A.M. Drilling notified the same day. It is also unregistered.

Registration is the driller's duty. LAC 56:I.105 gives the contractor 30 days from completion to file, and counts a well as complete when the owner accepts it, or the contractor moves his equipment off the site, whichever comes first. Our photographs show finished wellheads on July 30 and no drilling equipment. Applied Digital puts completion between April 9 and April 21, which sets the filing deadline between May 9 and May 21, about eleven weeks before Hall wrote that the office had received nothing.

The company's answer to that gap runs one sentence: "The registration filings have been made by the contractor." Hall wrote that her office processes registrations within 30 days of receipt and posts them online about a day later. The Kingfish Project has asked Applied Digital for the filing dates, and a SONRIS search on the morning of publication returned the same single industrial well for Rapides Parish, at Cabrini Hospital, completed in February. A registration filed in recent weeks could still be in processing. It would not account for the eleven weeks between the deadline and the day Hall searched her own files.

A SONRIS Water Wells Search for industrial wells completed in Rapides Parish in the last six months, run on the morning of publication, August 12, 2026. The search returns one record: registration 808166, a well at Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital, completed February 16, 2026. Neither 40-0252 nor 40-0253 appears.

The registration also carries more than the notification. For an industrial well, the rule calls for the electric log, the cuttings analysis, the chemical analysis of the water, and the aquifer test results to be attached where available — the technical record of what these wells draw from. Until the form is filed, everything stays with the company and its driller.

Cabrini Hospital completed an industrial well in February. A different contractor drilled it and filed the registration, and it appears in the public search as the only new industrial well the state's records show for the parish, on a spreadsheet where the previous new entry is from 2022.

The forms are captioned as 60-day prior notifications, and the rules require owners to notify the state at least 60 days before installation. These wells went from filing on March 31 to scheduled drilling on April 6, after the office had "received and responded," as a separate subsection requires of the contractor. Applied Digital says the notifications were "fast-tracked due to the need for on-site dust mitigation, in response to specific concerns about dust from local community members." The company did not cite any provision that shortens the 60-day period, and the state's April 6 letter mentions no waiver. The dust citation on file at LDEQ came in May, after both wells were finished.

Which aquifer

The driller wrote "RED RIVER ALLUV" on both forms, the shallow Red River alluvial aquifer. The reviewing office stamped both with 122CRNB, a code for the deeper Carnahan Bayou aquifer. The finding that the withdrawal should not affect the aquifer's sustainability was made under that code.

What comes next

Applied Digital answered five written questions on August 12 through JSA, the outside firm that handles its media relations. It dated the wells to April 9 through April 21, put their production at about 12 million gallons used solely for dust mitigation and lime-slurry mixing, said the registration filings have been made by the contractor, attributed the six-day notification timeline to dust control, and said its earlier water figures described the finished data center rather than construction. The full exchange is posted here, with private contact information redacted.

R.A.M. Drilling, which the company identifies as the party responsible for the filings, did not respond to an emailed request or a voicemail left the same day, July 29. A change in a well's use requires an amended notification 60 days before the new use begins. If the registrations surface, this story will say so, with dates: forms are processed within 30 days of receipt, Hall wrote, and appear online about a day later.

Anyone can check. Search SONRIS for wells 40-0252 and 40-0253, or write the Water Administration Division at gwater@la.gov. The office answered our questions in two days, with its records attached.

Each approval letter carried one warning, printed on the acknowledgment itself: "there may be unregistered water wells in the surrounding area." Four months later, the wells those letters approved have pumped about 12 million gallons. Their notified capacity is 594,000 gallons a day. Neither number appears in a record a citizen can search.

Spot an error? Receipts welcome: tips@kingfish.la.

Sources

Water well notification forms (DENR-GWR-01) and acknowledgment letters, Office of Permitting and Compliance, Department of Conservation and Energy: well 40-0252 and well 40-0253, filed March 31, 2026, acknowledged April 6, 2026 — pumping rates, depths, casings, and completion estimates quoted from the forms — and well 40-0255, acknowledged July 23, 2026.
Louisiana 811 locate tickets 260214966 and 260214988, called March 31, 2026, R.A.M. Drilling, LLC for Applied Digital.
Email, The Kingfish Project and Nicole R. Hall, P.G., Department of Conservation and Energy groundwater office, August 5–7, 2026, with the office's spreadsheet of industrial wells in Rapides Parish.
LDEQ Memo to File and response package, AI 250709, Applied Digital Corporation – Delta Forge 1, May 26 – July 7, 2026 (the dust citation and lime-slurry correction).
Kingfish Project aerial photographs, July 30, 2026, embedded above; well locations plotted from coordinates on the state notification forms.
LAC 56:I.105 (driller registration) · LAC 43:VI.701 (owner notification)
LED release, May 26, 2026 · KALB fact-check, June 25, 2026 (utility and cooling-fill figures, trade-secret withholding)
Written responses from Applied Digital, provided through JSA, August 12, 2026 — full email exchange, private contact information redacted (completion dates, volume pumped, registration and notification answers quoted from it).
SONRIS Water Wells Search, industrial wells completed in Rapides Parish, run August 12, 2026 — the screenshot embedded above.