Improving Your Search Results
Why can't I find a report?
The DNR's Well Filling & Sealing Reports have been in existence since the 1940's.
We have about 90,000 reports, but there are likely many more wells that have been
filled and sealed in Wisconsin. For several reasons, reports were never completed
or received by the Department and are not in our system.
Many reports, especially older ones, do not contain complete information which makes
locating those reports more difficult. When performing a search, start with
a minimum amount of information and make it as general as possible. All of
the search criteria you select must have been completed on a report in order for
it to show up in the results list. If any of your specified search criteria
are blank, spelled differently on a particular report or mistyped when entered into
our database, it will not show up in the result set. Try searching on one
to two fields of information to start, and make county one of them.
Search fields are not case sensitive.
It doesn't matter if you type all upper case letters, lower case or a combination.
County searches:
About 93% of the reports completed prior
to 2007 contain county information.If you can't locate a report with the
county selected, try searching on other locational information (street address or
township, range, range direction and possibly section) and unselect county.
Milwaukee and Waukesha counties:
These counties filed reports
by street address and that is the most reliable way to search for reports in these
counties.
Well Street Address:
When searching on a well street address,
try searching on just the street name first. Depending on the number of rows
returned, try adding a street direction and house number. Your search string
must be in the same order as it exists in the database: a search of "123 Main"
will not select a report with a street address containing "123 N Main". Directions
are usually N, E, S, W for north, east, south and west. Try omitting the St,
Ave, etc.
unless too many rows are returned without it. Do not
use periods after abbreviations.
Highways:
There are several abbreviations for highways, such
as STH, Hwy, State Hwy, etc.The best way to search an address on a highway
is to just type the highway number in alone (i.e. "29").
Changes over time:
It's possible that street names, property
boundaries and property owners may have changed over time. What was once a
well on your neighbor's property may now be a well on your property or vice versa.
If you find a report for an adjacent property, check the report to see if it's the
well in question.
Legal Description of Location:
If you can't locate a report
using the legal description (township, range, section), try removing the section
first and the range next if you still can't locate the report. Not all reports
had all four pieces of information.
City/Town/Village Name:
Some records contain information
like "City of Oconomowoc". Just typing "Oconomowoc" or "ocon" will return
these records.
Well Owner Last Name:
This is strictly the last name of the
owner who submitted the Well Filling & Sealing Report. Occasionally there
may be more than one name listed. Try searching on one name at a time to find
a well.
Person/Company who Performed Filling & Sealing:
Any number
of things could have been entered into this field. If you believe it was the
owner or an individual, search on the last name only. If it was a company
like "John's Well Drilling", it may have been typed in as "John's Well Drilling",
"John's Rotary Well Drilling", "John's Well Drilling Inc", etc. In this case,
searching on "johns" would be the best way to pull up all records for this company.
Sorting Search Results
Once you have a result set from a
query, you can sort those rows by clicking on the headings for any column that is
underlined. Clicking once will sort the rows in ascending order of the column. Clicking
twice will sort in descending order. Clicking another column heading will sort by
that column. It is only possible to sort on one column at a time.
Printing/Sending images of Well Filling & Sealing Reports:
Reports are scanned
Adobe Acrobat PDF images. If you are unable to view the image, you can download
a free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the images at
www.adobe.com.
In the Adobe Acrobat window of the scanned image, you can choose to save a copy
of the report, send a copy of the report to an email account or print the report
out.
What to do if you can't find a Well Filling & Sealing Report:
If you are having trouble using the search tool, you can contact the DNR at our
Madison office for assistance at 608-266-0821.
If the scanned image is not legible:
Sometimes the original
version of the report is light or faded and didn't scan well.; Our copy may
be slightly more legible. You may contact the DNR at our Madison office at
608-266-0821 for a copy of the report.