So what’s in your water? If you found discolored water, you may have some questions as well.

“I wonder if I should be doing heavy metal tests to see if any of this is safe, or hits human health or livestock limits,” said Randy Zmek, who couldn’t shake the feeling of the continued discoloration of his water and irrigation equipment.

Zmek wasn’t wrong. He ran some tests on scale build-up and discovered elevated levels of those heavy metals around his farm.

“I was surprised when I came to Nebraska, I guess this is probably 35-plus years ago, that Nebraska’s ground water has pretty high uranium," says Dan Snow, a Laboratory Director and Research Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The 40-year agronomist took samples in a 40-mile radius and found several spots, mostly irrigation wells, reaching beyond those levels of concern. Typically, an irrigation well taps into a pool of water closer to the surface.

"Especially the shallower groundwater close to the surface that has concentrations (of Uranium) higher (than the safe limit recommended by the United States Environmental Protection Agency),” Snow said.

It’s also true - aquifers not getting an extra layer of cleansing by seeping through clay can still contain several heavy metals.

“A lot of time, that water quality has a lot more iron in it, manganese, you name it, it’s there,” Adam Messenger said, a Municipal Manager for Downey Drilling. “PFAS, Nitrates (are) always the big one.”

“So if these wells are pumping out bad stuff, you’re being affected somewhere," said Zmek. "Your family might, your friends might, your livestock.”

A deeper well typically provides cleaner water. Even with additional filtration measures to protect the people on the property, there’s still reason to be worried.

“Does this filter take it all out?" Zmek asked while holding a water filter coated in orange scale. "No. Do we need to upgrade? Yes.”

Too much Manganese or Arsenic can lead to developmental disabilities for children, so they shuttered one of Zmek’s wells from being used at the Archer Zion Church.

"Not fit for infants to drink," Zmek says he was told.

“They have been linking exposure to Manganese to other types of human health effects,” said Snow. “Arsenic is one that we’ve known for quite sometime, this is a problematic trace element, in particular, the type of Arsenic, whether it’s reduced or oxidized Arsenic, can lead to even more health effects because it’s more difficult for the body to excrete Arsenic from the system.”

Jesse Bell did research on the water quality having impacts on health as well, and the Central Platte Natural Resources District published his work, while also further implementing the ability for people to get answers.

“In the last two or three years, as soon as they started kind of putting out information about their concerns with high cancer rates in Nebraska, especially in our heavily irrigated or agricultural areas, we’ve started inviting them to our meetings to do presentations to the general public about what to look for," said Lyndon Vogt, the General Manager of the CPNRD.

State officials have created a task force to keep tabs on those taps across Nebraska.

“We monitor all the drinking water systems that are permitted in the state," said Jesse Bradley, the Director of the Nebraska Department of Water, Energy, and Environment. "They have various sampling requirements that are required to be fulfilled.

"If we see those samples pop up with something, of those contaminants you described, we work immediately with those communities, make sure that they’re getting out the proper advisory notices in those communities, and that we’re working with them on solutions on how we are going to address that issue."

When it comes to those private wells, the owner is the last line of defense.