Green Acres--second edition

We've been really digging (ha, that's a pun!) around for information to decide what to do about the well.  As I said before, we're trying to decide whether to do a drilled or a bored well.   Our nearest neighbor, several acres to the west (are they neighbors if neither of us have built a house yet?) knows "a guy" at the  University of Illinois in an office that deals with local geological surveys and stuff.  So our neighbor, whom I will refer to as "Gifford" since that's from whence he's moving, called the geological guy and had him look at the water tables and do his mojo to see if he could tell us where the water can be found.  He said there's most definitely water and lots of it.  The problem is that we are a little higher and the land slopes pretty significantly (over a couple miles) toward the strip mine ponds in the Kickapoo area.  Since water wants to level itself out, it COULD be hiding low on our property to be in line with the water draining (read "being sucked") into the ponds.  He thinks the problem might be that people are just doing bored wells because the water is so deep.  If they don't drill deep enough to hit it, then they come up dry.  If this happened once or twice many years ago, people just start doing the bored wells.  Then when new builders come asking, it looks like there's no ground water.  Since you're paying by the foot for drilling, the bored wells are cheaper, too.

I'm sure you're all wondering the same thing that popped to my mind at this point.  How deep?  He says probably, maybe around 300 feet.  Whew.  That's a deep well.

So, do you drill, being fairly sure, there's water in them thar hills?  What if you come up dry at 300 feet?  Then you have to do a bored well anyway.  BUT, if you do hit, you have a better, safer well, that will be less susceptible to run-off and drought.  

The Hub, Gifford and Gillman (the neighbor to the east, who comes from, guess where?) have decided they should probably drill, but who gets to go first?  So, now we're all trying to wait out the others and let someone else be the guinea pig!  Ha.