Water wells in Smith County

1,005 WWC-5 records — 0.3% of the Kansas register. The median well here is 42 feet deep, against 60 feet statewide.

How deep people drill in Smith 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

22 records in Smith County carry a DWR appropriation number — 2.2%, 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 Smith County

The busiest contractor on these records is Watson Well Drilling, named on 88 of them (8.8%), ahead of Leroy Maruhn Well Drilling, INC (82) and Coranco Great Plains, INC (65). The oldest record here was completed in 1975 and the most recent in 2026, and the deepest well on file reaches 688 feet — a domestic well drilled by Melvin B. Karst Water Well Drilling & Service, INC in 1977.

Plugging records — in Smith County

208 of the 1,005 records in Smith County carry a plugging report (20.7%), filed on form WWC-5P. The other 797 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 216 records here completed before 1995, that is exactly what a buyer checks. Why it matters and who pays.

Who drills in Smith County

When they were drilled

An unplugged well on land in Smith County?

797 of the 1,005 records in Smith 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 Smith County

By water use in Smith County

• Domestic in Smith County 214
• Domestic, Livestock in Smith County 173
• Monitoring well/observation/piezometer in Smith County 478

Counties with a comparable register

• Lincoln 1,069
• Wabaunsee 1,061
• Stanton 1,059
• Marshall 1,058
• Osborne 1,047
• Wichita 1,037
• Nemaha 1,018
• Trego 980
• Lane 958
• Republic 942
• Logan 885
• Labette 872
• Hamilton 854

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.