Mud from a well

stuckmotor · Oct 25, 2025

A person could count the number of deep wells I've seen put in on one hand. These wells were all in the country and whether they were punched with a cable rig or drilled, the mud that came up from the earth was always left on the ground. It flowed down hill and was soon covered with grass. My brother had a well drilled a few days ago and there was NO MUD ON THE GROUND. Neither my brother nor I saw the well drillers at work. Is there an environmental law requiring the mud to be put into a landfill or is it done to keep mud out of people's yards?

Sportsman762 · Oct 25, 2025

It mostly depends on the driller on how they handle cuttings and mud. With a cable rig it was just cuttings and water. When they would bail the well they would just dump the cuttings next to the well. With a rotary drilling fluid (mud) is mixed in with the cuttings. You sent it into a mud pit to separate the two out. The mud pit might be a pit dug next to the well head or a pan that fits around the well. As your drilling you pump the mud down the drill stem and it flows up the annular (space between drill stem and the wells side) bringing up cuttings. Then it flows out of the top of the well into a pan or pit. Every so often the pan or pit needs dug out to remove cuttings to allow room for mud.

Drillers can either bury the cuttings and mud, or they can haul it off. In many small lot residential jobs there is not enough room or home owner does not want a second spot to have to reseed so they will haul the cuttings offsite. In other jobs with more space they will be buried. I think in some areas the drillers just leave them on top of the ground, however where I worked it was not considered an acceptable practice.

Here is an example of a pan that does not have a hole in it so you had to shove a pipe in the ground that had a lip to direct mud to the pan.

The Ideal Drillers Mud Pan - Custom Drilling Equipment From SIMCO - Simco Drilling Equipment - Water Well Drilling Rigs and Equipment, Geothermal Drilling Rigs, Equipment, Parts and Service

Many drilling mud pans are designed in a smaller keyhole shape. SIMCO’s drilling mud pan holds up to 300 gallons with plenty of room to shovel your drill cuttings out.

simcodrill.com

here is a pan that has the hole in it so you can drill through the pan. This is what I used as the weight of the pan would keep the overflow pipe held in the bore and sealed up better. They are a bit more of a pain to move though since the guitar shape is a bit more ungainly.