Well Drilling in Cherokee County, GA

• Cherokee County's rows in the Census Bureau's 2020 place-by-county file show Ball Ground, Canton, Holly Springs, Mountain Park, Nelson, Waleska and Woodstock, each as an incorporated city. Mountain Park also has a row under Fulton County and Nelson one under Pickens County.
• Planning context: Cherokee County's current comprehensive plan was adopted August 15, 2023. Its character-area table describes Rural Places as potentially with public water but with sewer not planned, and Country Estates as potentially with public water and typically lacking sewer.
• Checking a contractor: EPD maintains listings of active licensed water well drillers and active certified pump installers, and the Cherokee County Extension office's agriculture page links to EPD under the heading Licensed Water Well Drillers and Pump Installers.

• New household wells, preceded by the contractor's Notice of Intent to the county health department
• Pump installation, removal and onsite service, each followed by the chlorination Rule 770-5-.09(3) requires
• Filling, sealing and plugging abandoned wells, a duty DPH assigns to the present owner
• Completion paperwork on EPD's Well Completion Data Form, which has boxes for new construction, repair or modification, and abandoned wells
• Bacteria and expanded well-water tests through the Cherokee County Extension office

• County charges: the Cherokee Environmental Health fee schedule still hosted on the district's site was approved by the Board of Health on January 24, 2008, too long ago to quote; ask the office for its current well-related charges.
• Fracture pattern: HA 730-G says a well that crosses several small fractures as well as one large one probably will have a large sustained yield. A well that meets only one large fracture, or only a few small, shallow ones, may yield enough at first, but its yield can drop suddenly once the fractures drain.
• Casing length: the same atlas says wells in crystalline-rock areas are ordinarily cased through the regolith, the weathered layer over the bedrock, which is usually thin under ridges, hilltops, steep draws and steep slopes and thickest, in places as much as about 100 feet, under broad draws, broad valleys and a few upland flats.
• Estimating: the site's cost calculator takes a depth you enter, prices it per foot for the formation you choose, and adds a generic permit allowance plus optional pump and tank amounts. None of the official sources reviewed for this page prints a typical well depth for Cherokee County, so no local total appears here; ask each driller for footage, casing and pump prices in writing.

• Notice of Intent: the form EPD posts as agent for the Water Well Standards Advisory Council (version January 21, 2026) is addressed to the county health department, cites O.C.G.A. 12-5-134(1)(A)(i) and lists every field it needs. Beside the expected start date it reads '3-day notice requested', with a date plus or minus 30 days allowed for an agricultural irrigation well that has no firm date. The licensed contractor signs it and either drills personally or names partners, officers or employees authorized to drill under that license, taking responsibility for their work at the site.
• Posting and construction: Rule 770-5-.08(2) has the licensee post each approved activity at its site on Council-provided forms. Paragraph (4) holds every well to the Act's requirements and to standards typically used in the industry; drilling fluids have to be disinfected unless taken from a source that meets all Georgia Safe Drinking Water Act maximum contaminant levels.
• Distances: citing DNR's Water Well Standards Act, DPH gives these minimum horizontal distances for a well: sewer line, 10 feet; septic tank, 50 feet; septic tank absorption field, 100 feet; cesspool or seepage pit, 150 feet; animal or fowl enclosure, 100 feet. DPH also asks that the well be placed as far from known or potential sources of pollution as the general layout allows, and says it must not go in an area subject to flooding unless its casing reaches two feet or more above the highest known flood of record. Among the pollution-protection checks on EPD's completion form are boxes for health department notice and for a health department variance, so on a tight lot ask Cherokee County Environmental Health, before drilling, whether a variance can be considered.
• Completion record: among its entries, the Well Completion Data Form records total depth, static water level, drill hole, grouting, casing and pump details and a driller's log of the material encountered. The licensed well contractor certifies the information as correct, a second signature line is provided for a licensed geologist or engineer, and the footer marks the original for the property owner, a file copy for the water well contractor and a copy for the regulatory agency.
• Complaints: EPD investigates written complaints submitted within two years from completion of the well or within one year from completion of the pump installation, and DPH says licensed drillers must provide a performance bond or letter of credit.
• Old wells: by DPH's definition a well is abandoned once it is no longer in use; generally it counts as 'temporarily abandoned' after going unused for a minimum of 365 days and 'permanently abandoned' after three years unused. DPH states that any existing abandoned well or borehole shall be filled, sealed, and plugged by the present owner. Ask Environmental Health or EPD which method and which contractor the job requires.

• Aquifer: USGS codes well 09HH10, a Cherokee County site, to national aquifer N400PDMBRX, the Piedmont and Blue Ridge crystalline-rock aquifers. HA 730-G, which describes those aquifers across parts of Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina rather than this county alone, says unweathered, unfractured bedrock there has extremely low porosity and permeability, leaving the regolith and fractures in the rock as the two sources of groundwater.
• Bedrock (2007 text): the January 2007 Community Assessment, prepared for an earlier joint comprehensive plan, says the primary bedrock is crystalline granite, gneiss, schist and quartzite and that its low storage capacity means most of the water supply must come from surface streams, rivers, reservoirs and lakes. It added that a portion of the county was still dependent on well water for domestic use.
• Physiographic districts (2007 text): within the Upper Piedmont, the assessment names the Cherokee Highlands (later in the same passage, Cherokee-Upland) District over most of the northwest including Waleska, the Dahlonega Upland in the northeast, the Hightower-Jasper District over most of Canton and the cities of Holly Springs and Ball Ground, and the Central Upland from just north of Woodstock across the extreme southeast edge.
• Recharge (2007 text): citing Department of Natural Resources and Georgia Geologic Survey mapping at 1:500,000, a scale it says limits identification to the larger sites, the assessment points to three probable areas that may be significant recharge areas, relatively flat with thick soils, on a southwest-to-northeast trend: one at the lower southwest corner and two extending northeast near Holly Springs and Canton.
• Water table: HA 730-G describes the water table in these aquifers as mirroring the land surface in subdued form, tens to hundreds of feet below ground beneath hills and steep ridges and at or close to the surface in valleys and beside lakes, ponds and wetlands.
• Water quality: the atlas finds the water generally suitable for drinking and says dissolved constituents seldom exceed state and federal drinking-water standards, the exceptions being fluoride, iron, manganese and, locally, sulfate. For large iron and manganese concentrations, it credits oxidation and filtration as the usual remedy.

Canton · Woodstock · Holly Springs · Ball Ground · Waleska · Nelson · Mountain Park