British Columbia

Agreed. There’s a huge difference between a shallow well and a drilled well though; I know one person who had to switch around 15 years ago, for similar reasons, and they had to go down 740 feet to hit water — which turned out to be high in Boron so it wasn’t potable without filtering.

Anything in the tens of feet deep is just capturing ground runoff or is sitting on top of an artesian well. In a drought, that water either doesn’t exist in the first place, or is going to drop significantly lower with less pressure. Depending solely on surface water means your well WILL go dry somewhat regularly.

This person hasn’t lived there very long, and obviously didn’t know this about shallow wells.

Now as you point out, digging a deep well is no guarantee; there’s a high likelihood you’re tapping into the same aquifer as your neighbours, and so all it takes is one person to pump it down, and everyone loses their water for weeks until it fills back up.

Deep wells have the benefit that it takes a multi year drought to impact them significantly—that, or an increase in draw from the community. As long as everyone is being responsible and new wells are limited, a couple of years of drought will only have a minimal effect as the water table generally accumulates water from the surrounding rock, not just water that drained from the surface that year.