By Hydrosimulatics INC  

Zeke , the well driller with a healthy curiosity, has a question for you. He had installed a set of wells in an aquifer he knows (accurately) to be confined. One of the wells was turned on and pumped continuously. Head measurements were taken at the surrounding wells. Playing around with Darcy’s law, he noticed an “odd” phenomenon: based on his calculations from the heads of surrounding wells, the amount of water flowing toward the well appeared to increase over time. Yet the pumping rate at the well was constant. Explain to the well-driller what was happening. Draw cross-sections of the potentiometric surface around the well with time.