Water wells in Riley County

3,583 WWC-5 records — 1.1% of the Kansas register. The median well here is 50 feet deep, against 60 feet statewide.

How deep people drill in Riley 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

211 records in Riley County carry a DWR appropriation number — 5.9%, 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 Riley County

The busiest contractor on these records is Associated Environmental, INC, named on 596 of them (16.6%), ahead of Haldeman Well Drilling & Pump Service (336) and Strader Drilling Co., INC (335). The oldest record here was completed in 1975 and the most recent in 2026, and the deepest well on file reaches 400 feet — a domestic well drilled by Associated Environmental, INC in 2003.

Plugging records — in Riley County

858 of the 3,583 records in Riley County carry a plugging report (23.9%), filed on form WWC-5P. The other 2,725 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 949 records here completed before 1995, that is exactly what a buyer checks. Why it matters and who pays.

Who drills in Riley County

When they were drilled

An unplugged well on land in Riley County?

2,725 of the 3,583 records in Riley 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 Riley County

By water use in Riley County

• Domestic in Riley County 1,377
• Geothermal, Closed Loop, Vertical in Riley County 155
• Monitoring well/observation/piezometer in Riley County 1,299

Counties with a comparable register

• Ford 4,946
• Shawnee 4,748
• Rice 4,156
• Sumner 3,912
• Edwards 3,879
• Kingman 3,776
• Dickinson 3,662
• Pawnee 3,568
• Douglas 3,290
• Gray 3,079
• Seward 2,995
• Pottawatomie 2,949
• Leavenworth 2,850

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.