Ken Swarthout was born and raised in Hemet, California. His father was a farmer in the valley, and after serving in the Air Force, he and his brother turned to raising different types of crops. That's where Swarthout learned the ins and outs of machinery.
Clean, safe groundwater is one of our most valuable and essential resources on this planet. It is the duty of groundwater professionals to protect this valuable resource for future generations.
Every profession, especially a niche field like drilling, has tricks or jargon that everyone assumes everyone else knows. But, if you missed it during training, specialty knowledge veers quickly into "too embarrassed to ask" territory.
Looking at a water map of the U.S. recently, I noticed that most of the Great Lakes states — which include Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota, plus the non-Great Lakes state of Iowa — all have groundwater that is classified as very hard.