As the water cannot get out of this gravel
until you punch a hole in its lid, its effort will be to shoot up to
something less than the elevation at which it gained entrance to this
gravel - as soon as your puncture gives it a chance. Geologists who know
the locality may be able to tell you that you have little or no chance,
but no one can tell you whether you have a good chance or not until he
has tested the matter by boring. The quality of the artesian water is
determined by its distant source and the bad water you have found is
therefore no indication of the quality of what may be below it. No one
should enter an artesian undertaking, except to tap a stratum of known
depth, without a long purse. Probably one in a thousand of the bores
made into the crust of the earth yields as many gallons of artesian
water as gallons of various liquids used in boring it - and yet some of
them are good wells to pump from because they pierce other strata
carrying water, but not under pressure causing it to rise.
Treatment of Alkali.
I am advised that in some cases alkali may be drained and that in others
it is treated with gypsum.
Gypsum is not a cure for alkali, but simply a means of transforming
black alkali into white, which is less corrosive and therefore less
destructive to plants, but there may be easily too much white alkali
present - so much that the land would be made sterile by it.
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