How can a well be legal­ized?

Many res­i­dent enti­ties won­der what steps should be tak­en to legal­ize water well. Let’s con­sid­er what respon­si­bil­i­ty is pro­vid­ed by the leg­is­la­tion in case you have no doc­u­ments. Para­graph 2 of Arti­cle 240 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Ukraine pro­vides that vio­la­tion of estab­lished rules for the use of sub­soil, if it cre­at­ed a dan­ger to life, health of peo­ple or the envi­ron­ment, or ille­gal extrac­tion of min­er­als of nation­al impor­tance, is pun­ish­able by a fine from three thou­sand to five thou­sand non-tax­able min­i­mum incomes of cit­i­zens or impris­on­ment for a term up to three years, or depri­va­tion of lib­er­ty for the same term. There­fore, in the best case, your com­pa­ny is threat­ened with a fine of not less than 51,000 UAH, since water is a valu­able min­er­al of nation­al impor­tance accord­ing to the Res­o­lu­tion of the Cab­i­net of Min­is­ters of Ukraine of Decem­ber 12, 1994, No. 827.

Let’s imag­ine that your enter­prise has a well that was drilled long ago, and it is not known which orga­ni­za­tion exact­ly drilled it. For exam­ple, the orga­ni­za­tion that drilled the well was state-owned and has now been liq­ui­dat­ed. You have no doc­u­ments, of course, but there is a need to use water for pro­duc­tion pur­pos­es. You need to inves­ti­gate this issue to the max­i­mum detail regard­ing your well, includ­ing which orga­ni­za­tion drilled it, the con­struc­tion of the well, its pro­duc­tiv­i­ty (flow rate), pro­duc­tive hori­zon, and qual­i­ty char­ac­ter­is­tics (com­po­si­tion) of ground­wa­ter. To inves­ti­gate this issue, you will need to col­lect sam­ples to deter­mine the chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion of ground­wa­ter, radi­a­tion qual­i­ty, and bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal indi­ca­tors in the appro­pri­ate accred­it­ed and cer­ti­fied lab­o­ra­to­ries.

It will also be very use­ful to find out which orga­ni­za­tion exact­ly drilled the well and obtain max­i­mum geo­log­i­cal and tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion. To do this, you can con­tact the State Sci­en­tif­ic and Pro­duc­tion Enter­prise “Geoin­form Ukraine”, which stores sec­ondary geo­log­i­cal infor­ma­tion, includ­ing the results of geo­log­i­cal explo­ration for ground­wa­ter. The next step to take is to inves­ti­gate the well’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty through pump tests and mea­sur­ing sta­t­ic and dynam­ic lev­els. If you have col­lect­ed all this mate­r­i­al, you have enough data to restore the well pass­port. To do this, you need to con­tact a spe­cial­ized com­pa­ny that will con­duct a sur­vey of the well togeth­er with your rep­re­sen­ta­tive and pre­pare a cor­re­spond­ing report. This report, as well as the col­lect­ed infor­ma­tion, will be the basis for restor­ing the pass­port of the arte­sian well. After restor­ing the pass­port, it is nec­es­sary to reg­is­ter it in the State Reg­is­ter of Arte­sian Wells.

If you use water for any pur­pose oth­er than pro­duc­ing pack­aged water, and the vol­ume of with­draw­al and/or use exceeds 5 m³/day, the next manda­to­ry step accord­ing to the Water Code of Ukraine will be to obtain a per­mit for spe­cial water use, which must include cal­cu­la­tions of the max­i­mum allow­able dis­charge in case your com­pa­ny has a reverse dis­charge of used water into water bod­ies. After obtain­ing the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments, you need to install cal­i­brat­ed meters and seal them, keep a record book of ground­wa­ter and time­ly pay a rent fee accord­ing to the per­mit for spe­cial water use. And don’t for­get to remind your accoun­tant about the annu­al report­ing in the form of 2‑TP, which must be sub­mit­ted to the State Agency of Water Resources of Ukraine at the end of the year. Also, before start­ing to with­draw ground­wa­ter, you must have a plan for the cur­rent year’s selec­tion and usage of ground­wa­ter approved by the inter­re­gion­al depart­ment of the State Labor Ser­vice of Ukraine.

If you have a pro­duc­tion of bot­tled water, or extrac­tion of min­er­al water for any pur­pose (includ­ing exter­nal use), or pro­vide drink­ing water of any dai­ly vol­ume, then accord­ing to the Code of Ukraine on Sub­soil, you need to obtain a Spe­cial Per­mit for sub­soil use. Depend­ing on the aspects of the spe­cial per­mit, you may need to obtain it through auc­tion or with­out auc­tion, and com­ply with spe­cial con­di­tions of the per­mit and the Work Pro­gram, with­in which you will need to devel­op a geo­log­i­cal study project, a pilot devel­op­ment project, a report on geo­log­i­cal-eco­nom­ic eval­u­a­tion, devel­op and approve san­i­tary pro­tec­tion zones, and a tech­no­log­i­cal scheme for the devel­op­ment of under­ground water deposits.

Also, you should have a hydro­ge­ol­o­gist on staff, or you can con­tract with a spe­cial­ized com­pa­ny for hydro­ge­o­log­i­cal ser­vices. If you have a spe­cial per­mit, you will need to report annu­al­ly to the Ukrain­ian Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey accord­ing to Form 7‑GR, as well as sub­mita report on the imple­men­ta­tion of the work pro­gram. Regard­ing fis­cal oblig­a­tions, in addi­tion to the rent for spe­cial water use, a rent for the use of sub­soil will also be added.

Final­ly, regard­less of whether you have a spe­cial per­mit or not, you will need to obtain a per­mit from the State Labor Ser­vice for the Per­mit for the Per­for­mance of High-Risk Work and for the oper­a­tion (use) of machin­ery, equip­ment, and tools of increased dan­ger.

Remem­ber, legal­iz­ing a well is not easy, but it is vital because you will sleep more sound­ly and not wor­ry about the pos­si­ble ter­ri­ble con­se­quences of using a well with­out doc­u­ments.