Well Drilling in Clay County, FL

• Place names here follow the Census Bureau. Its 2020 place file for Clay County lists the cities of Green Cove Springs and Keystone Heights, the towns of Orange Park and Penney Farms, and the census-designated places of Asbury Lake, Bellair-Meadowbrook Terrace, Fleming Island, Lakeside, Middleburg and Oakleaf Plantation, and the Bureau's current TIGERweb map service still shows all ten.
• Marion County and Lake County, which also have pages on this site, appear beside Clay in Rule 40C-3.035's list of SJRWMD well permitting delegation agreements.
• Florida DOH treats a well serving two or more rental residences, a home used as a day care, group home, nursing home or assisted living facility, or a business or commercial establishment as a public water system, not a private well; its page explains when DOH or the Department of Environmental Protection regulates one. DOH-Clay posts the limited use water construction, operation, registration and variance applications on its forms page.

• New wells under six inches in diameter, permitted through DOH-Clay
• Six-inch and larger wells permitted directly by SJRWMD
• Pump, pressure tank and water conditioning installation
• Plugging abandoned, incomplete or unsuitable wells
• Bacteria and nitrate testing of private wells
• Sorting out red staining or a rotten-egg smell before buying treatment

• Permit fee: Rules 40C-3.101(4) and 40C-3.301(2) tie the non-refundable application fee either to the District's Rule 40C-1.603 or to the fee schedule of the agency holding delegated permitting authority. SJRWMD's well construction page likewise refers fee questions on delegated wells to the county health department or local government, so get the current amount from DOH-Clay.
• Aquifer choice: the 1977 USGS report puts the water table more than 20 feet below land in the ridge area near Keystone Heights and less than 10 feet below it in the eastern county. It describes the secondary artesian sequence, limestone and sand layers in the Hawthorn Formation plus, outside the Keystone Heights area, limestone and shell beds in the Choctawhatchee Formation, as 150 to 250 feet thick in all. In 1977 most Floridan wells in the county penetrated 100 to 300 feet of that aquifer, and few went more than 400 feet into it.
• Casing: under Rule 40C-3.512(3) and (4), a well finished in unconsolidated material needs continuous casing from its terminus down to the screen, while one finished in a consolidated aquifer needs casing from the upper terminus seated either into the producing aquifer or into a consolidated stratum within a continuous non-caving confining unit lying immediately over it.
• Estimating tool: this site's well cost calculator is generic. You enter a depth and a rock type, it applies national per-foot ranges from Angi, HomeGuide and HomeAdvisor, then adds its standard $200-$500 permit range and, if you choose, pump and tank costs. Nothing in it is specific to Clay County, so rely on a driller's written per-foot quote instead.

• Which office: SJRWMD's well construction page says the District itself permits wells six inches or more in outside diameter at land surface, gang wells whose casings total six inches or more (unless used for dewatering), open-loop geothermal wells six inches or larger and all closed-loop geothermal wells. Rule 62-524.430, F.A.C., which lists delineated-area maps county by county, has no Clay County heading.
• Permit first: Rule 40C-3.041(1) requires a permit before any well in the District is built, repaired or abandoned unless a statute or Chapter 40C-3 expressly exempts it. The exemption in Rule 40C-3.051(5) for licensed contractors building wells under six inches does not reach jurisdictions where the District has delegated permitting for those wells, so it is not available in Clay County.
• Applicants: Rule 40C-3.101(1) issues permits only on application by the owner of the property where the well will be, a person whose lease or easement expressly grants a right to build a well, or an authorized agent of either. It goes on the state form, DEP Form 62-532.900(1), and Rule 40C-3.101(2) lists every item the form must carry.
• Issuance: Rule 40C-3.301 lists every condition an application must meet before a permit issues.
• Permit term: Rule 40C-3.301(8) makes a permit good for 90 days from issuance unless the District extends it, and subsection (9) bars starting or continuing work after expiry unless a written extension request reached the District first; the two subsections set the extension and renewal conditions.
• Licensing: to do business as a water well contractor in Florida a person must be licensed by a water management district, and a license from any district counts in every district (s. 373.323(1) and (5), F.S.); under the Clay agreement SJRWMD still examines and licenses contractors drilling in the county. Section 373.336(1)(b) makes it unlawful to build, repair or abandon a well, or run drilling equipment for that work, unless the person works for, or is supervised by, a licensed water well contractor, or is exempt under s. 373.326. Every drilling rig or other piece of drilling equipment a contractor owns, leases or operates has to carry the license number prominently (s. 373.323(9)).
• Pump work: under s. 373.303(2), F.S., construction of water wells does not include putting in pumps or pumping equipment. Section 373.323(10) authorizes licensed water well contractors to put in, fix and alter pumps and tanks following Section 614 of the plumbing volume of the Florida Building Code, and to put in pumps, tanks and water conditioning equipment on any water system.
• Grouting: where construction leaves an annular space, Rule 40C-3.517(2)-(3) calls for a nominal one-inch grout seal on casing under 4 inches in outside diameter and nominal two-inch grout along the full length of casing 4 inches or larger, subject to the rule's separate provisions for telescoped, jetted and driven-casing wells. The rest of the rule sets grout mixes, placement methods, set times and the lost-circulation procedure.
• Bentonite: under Rule 40C-3.512(8), wells using bentonite grout need a clean casing seat, a formation boot or Portland cement plug at the seat and Portland cement in the top three feet of the annulus. Bentonite grout is allowed only for domestic, irrigation, water source or ground source heat pump installations or well abandonments with nominal casing four inches or less, and never on public supply wells, where artesian flow occurs, or at identified contamination sites. The subsection closes by requiring, in all circumstances, protection against cross-contamination under Rule 40C-3.512(2), casing or lining of any caving zone below the casing seat, and no casing seated in an unconsolidated unit above the producing aquifer.
• Siting: Rule 40C-3.502(2) applies the setback requirements of Rule 62-532.400(7) and (8) to every well built, repaired or abandoned in the District.
• Records: within 30 days of finishing the work, the contractor files a State of Florida Well Completion Report (DEP Form 62-532.900(2)), whether or not a permit was needed, with a District office, through sjrwmd.com, or with the delegated permitting entity. Rule 40C-3.411(1)(a)-(b) allows two alternatives: one form may cover all monitoring wells at a contamination site if a map and table showing each well's location go with it, and computer-generated reports the contractor develops may replace District forms if the District approved them before use. If no work was done or the well wasn't finished, the contractor reports that within 30 days after the permit expires (Rule 40C-3.411). Rule 40C-3.021(19) treats a well as completed by the driller once the rig has been continuously absent for five or more days, unless proper notice, such as a phone call, goes to a District representative. Rule 40C-3.461(3) requires a metallic tag showing at least the contractor's license number, completion date and permit number on the wellhead, concrete marker, terminal box or a permanently attached fixture.
• Plugging: abandoned wells are plugged under Rule 40C-3.517(9) unless the District specifies otherwise, by a licensed water well contractor, and the property owner must see that every abandoned well on the land is properly plugged by one (Rule 40C-3.531(2)). A well the contractor leaves incomplete or unsuitable is plugged before the rig leaves or within 14 days of receipt of District notice, and the owner separately must have a licensed contractor plug it within 14 days of receiving such notice (40C-3.531(4)-(5)). A request to abandon goes on the state permit application unless Rule 40C-3.051 exempts the well, and that rule's exemption for unlicensed individuals, described in the FAQs, includes abandoning a qualifying well of a nominal two inches or less on their own or leased property. The method follows Rule 40C-3.517(9)-(10), which also requires at least 24 hours' notice to the District before an abandonment starts.
• Testing: Florida requires no routine sampling of private home wells and none when a home is sold, and DOH's list of counties with local rules requiring tests of new or repaired wells does not include Clay. The state health department's advice is a bacteria and nitrate test every year at minimum, which it "strongly recommends," plus a lead test every three years for most homeowners. DOH-Clay sends samples to the state laboratory for bacteriological testing on the second Thursday of each month; get a kit with instructions from its Environmental Public Health office and drop samples there after noon the day before or by 9 a.m. on collection day.

• Water-table aquifer: USGS describes it as mainly sand and clayey sand, with limestone beds of the Choctawhatchee Formation included near Keystone Heights. Along Trail Ridge north of Kingsley Lake it reaches a maximum of about 130 feet thick, thinning to 70 feet or less south of the lake, and east of the ridge it is about 50 feet thick. In most areas it yields enough for domestic and stock use.
• Secondary artesian aquifers: relatively impermeable clay layers separate the water-bearing zones from each other and from the aquifers above and below, and single zones run from a few inches to several feet thick. SJRWMD's 1993 Technical Publication SJ93-7 calls intermediate aquifers in the Hawthorn Group or undifferentiated post-Hawthorn sediments an important water source in Duval, Clay and parts of eastern Flagler and St. Johns counties, and says many domestic wells in Duval, Clay, Flagler and St. Johns counties tap them.
• Floridan freshwater boundary (1977): saline water lies under the fresh water in the Floridan everywhere in the county, according to USGS, from 500 feet below land in the southeast corner and more than 2,000 feet below it in the northeast. The report rates Floridan water generally of good chemical quality, best in the central county and poorest in the southeast.
• Lakes: SJ93-7 names southwestern Clay County among the principal recharge areas of the Floridan aquifer system in the lower St. Johns River ground water flow system and notes that the lake region of southwestern Clay and northwestern Putnam counties has a relatively high potential for lake levels to fall when Floridan levels are lowered.

Green Cove Springs · Orange Park · Keystone Heights · Penney Farms · Middleburg · Fleming Island · Oakleaf Plantation · Lakeside · Asbury Lake · Bellair-Meadowbrook Terrace