About Well Labs Index
A directory by Shortell Designs for U.S. private well owners. We publish state-certified laboratories and official testing guidance. We do not invent records.
What we are
Well Labs Index helps a well owner find a laboratory that the state has actually accredited — then understand which tests to run before spending money on treatment. It is not a government website, not a laboratory, and not a water-treatment contractor.
Methodology
- Lab rows are transcribed from official state PDFs or agency pages. Each JSON record carries a source URL and document date.
- If a field is not on the source (drop-off vs. mail, county, price, current private-well acceptance), we write unknown or omit it and link the official list.
- We do not copy business-directory phone numbers or “enrich” records from Google, Yelp, or lab marketing sites.
- Municipal water-plant laboratories that appear on a statewide accreditation dump are omitted from homeowner pages unless an official source says they accept private-well samples. That is a directory choice, disclosed on the state page.
- Guidance pages quote or closely paraphrase CDC, EPA, USGS, MDH, PA DEP, Penn State Extension, Ohio EPA, and Ohio Department of Health, with page dates.
- We do not publish best-of filter lists, invented statistics, or unsourced prices.
How to add a state: see README.md. What we fetched for this version: SOURCES.md.
Commission disclosure
Well Labs Index is intended to become an income site. In later versions we may earn a commission if you buy a test kit, treatment equipment, or a related service through a link. This first version has no live affiliate links and no paid placements. Laboratory listings are not advertisements. MDH and PA DEP both state that appearance on an official list is not an endorsement; we follow that.
If we add affiliate links later, they will be labeled on the page where they appear, and we will not let a commission change which laboratory is listed.
Contact
Byline: Shortell Designs / Well Labs Index. This static first version does not yet publish an editorial email on the public pages; methodology questions belong in the repository documentation until a contact form is added.
Related tax guide: 2026 quarterly estimated tax dates for W-2 + 1099 side hustles. Optional: $29 workbook on Gumroad.
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