Water wells in Norton County

1,770 WWC-5 records — 0.6% of the Kansas register. The median well here is 80 feet deep, against 60 feet statewide.

How deep people drill in Norton County

This is what a buyer or a builder actually wants, and the Survey does not publish it as a figure you can look up. The numbers below are medians over the records where a figure was reported — a mean would be carried away by a few deep irrigation wells.

What the water is used for

Wells tied to a water right

182 records in Norton County carry a DWR appropriation number — 10.3%, against 11.0% statewide. A well permit and a water right are separate instruments in Kansas, and the appropriation number is the thread back to the Division of Water Resources.

What stands out in Norton County

The busiest contractor on these records is Jay C. Woofter Pump & Well, INC, named on 291 of them (16.4%), ahead of Leo J. Stalder Drilling (199) and John Fawcett Drilling CO (178). The oldest record here was completed in 1975 and the most recent in 2026, and the deepest well on file reaches 330 feet — a irrigation well drilled by Woofter Pump and Well, INC in 2015.

Plugging records — in Norton County

247 of the 1,770 records in Norton County carry a plugging report (14.0%), filed on form WWC-5P. The other 1,523 do not.

That is not a list of abandoned wells, and this site never calls them that. Kansas defines abandonment by use — a well unused for two years — and nothing in this register tracks use. What the absence of a plugging report does mean is that the State has never been told the well was sealed. On the 499 records here completed before 1995, that is exactly what a buyer checks. Why it matters and who pays.

Who drills in Norton County

When they were drilled

An unplugged well on land in Norton County?

1,523 of the 1,770 records in Norton County have no plugging report on file. If a well on your land is no longer used, Kansas requires it to be plugged and the duty falls on the landowner — with cost-share of up to USD 1,000 per well through the Kansas Department of Agriculture. This site reads the register; it does not drill and it does not plug. Tell us where and we pass the request to licensed Kansas well contractors.

We recommend no contractor and we are nobody's agent. We have no arrangement with any firm today — we are collecting these requests in order to go and find them. What we do with this.

Records in Norton County

By water use in Norton County

• Domestic in Norton County 793
• Domestic, Livestock in Norton County 287
• Irrigation in Norton County 190
• Monitoring well/observation/piezometer in Norton County 331

Counties with a comparable register

• Sheridan 2,086
• Ellsworth 2,028
• Rush 1,921
• Geary 1,901
• Barber 1,835
• Washington 1,798
• Phillips 1,775
• Russell 1,752
• Cloud 1,746
• Morris 1,671
• Rawlins 1,643
• Clay 1,621
• Ottawa 1,592

Neighbours by the size of their register, not a ranking: the list slides with the county, so each of the 100 county pages is reachable from the others. All of them.