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Tool T02 · Pump Test
When you pump a well, you don't just move water at the well — you create a cone-shaped depression in the water table for thousands of feet around. This tool uses the Theis (1935) equation to show how that cone forms.
A large cone of depression can pull water — and contamination — from further away than expected. If a proposed industrial well sits near a contamination plume, its cone could pull the plume into the drinking water supply.
This is central to POA's 2017 fight to stop TVA from drilling cooling wells next to arsenic-contaminated coal ash ponds. The cone of depression would have reached directly into the plume.