Water Supply - Village of Halkirk, NE-24-38-16-W4

The Village of Halkirk plans to install a distribution system to supply water to village residents. The population of the village is 210 and initially 25 houses will be connected to the distribution system. The village drilled a test well to determine whether an adequate quantity of groundwater could be obtained to supply the distribution system. A pumping test was conducted on this well from August 18 to August 20.

Most wells in the Halkirk district are completed in the lower member of the Edmonton Formation. The Edmonton Formation is overlain by 10 to 50 feet of glacial drift and underlain by the Bearpaw Formation. At Halkirk, a deep test hole drilled by the Castor School Division encountered inflammable gas, but only a small quantity of water in the Bearpaw Formation. Water encountered below the Bearpaw Formation would likely be saline. Sand and gravel deposits in the glacial drift may yield small quantities of hard, possibly alkaline water.

The lower Edmonton member is made up of brown and grey silty shale, coal, and minor fine-grained sandstone. Most wells obtain water from fractured coal seams. The village well, and a farm well on the NW 18, Tp. 38, R. 15, W. 4th Mer. 1/2 mile south of Halkirk, are reported to be the two best wells in the district. In both wells, water is obtained from a zone about 25 feet thick made up of one or more coal seams, associated with beds of soft sandstone. This zone is found at a depth of 118 feet in the village well and at a depth of 135 feet in the farm well 1/2 mile south of Halkirk. On the east side of Halkirk, at the school, the zone appears to have shaled out.