City hears plan to expand Casper Aquifer monitoring network; initial baseline testing estimated at about $150,000/year

Laramie — Consultants from Trihydro Corporation presented the City Council with a plan to formalize and expand monitoring of the Casper Aquifer, proposing a five‑year baseline sampling program, continued monitoring of about 10 existing wells and a set of additional sentinel and gap‑filling wells around production fields and potential contaminant sources.

The work would establish a water‑quality baseline for the Casper Aquifer within the city’s protection area, develop a sampling and analysis plan and identify wells that could serve as early warning or sentinel sites upstream of production wells, consultants said. Ryan Athey, a consultant with Trihydro Corporation, told the council the effort builds on the Casper Aquifer protection plan adopted earlier and “would develop that frequency and time frame” for regular monitoring of existing wells and any newly installed points.

Why it matters: The monitoring network is intended to give city water managers earlier data about groundwater quality and hydrologic connections so they can identify changes and, where possible, take operational steps — for example changing which production wells are pumped — before contaminants reach the city’s production wells. Council members repeatedly framed the project as preventive: collecting a robust baseline makes it easier to spot and respond to anomalies and to seek outside funds for investigations if…