Castle Hayne Aquifer Wellfield, New Bern, NC

Fifteen test wells were installed to support GMA’s evaluation and development of a new wellfield using the Castle Hayne Aquifer as a source of public water supply for the City of New Bern.  The results of this exploration program guided the final design of 15 production wells to supply a new 4 million gallon per day (MGD) water treatment plant that was necessary to offset Central Coastal Plain Capacity Use Area (CCPCUA) restrictions imposed on New Bern’s production wells tapping the Cretaceous Aquifer System. GMA’s involvement during the test well and production well projects included development of the drilling specifications, on-site drilling supervision and geologic logging of strata penetrated during borehole drilling, interpretation of borehole geophysical logs, providing screen placement recommendations, performing constant-rate aquifer testing, utilizing these test data to calculate hydraulic parameters of the aquifer (e.g., transmissivity, storage coefficient, and specific capacity) and well efficiency, and determining the appropriate pumping rate for each production well within the wellfield operational plan.