(Radio Iowa) – A study from Iowa State University shows that only five to ten percent of the 230-thousand private well owners in the state test their water annually. Iowa State Extension Water Quality Program Manager Catherine DeLong says one of the barriers to testing is a misunderstanding of what quality well water should be. “I think a lot of the time, private well owners think that if you have a private well, it’s a normal thing to have bacteria, but it really isn’t,” She says. “It means there’s something potentially structurally unsound with the well, that there’s a way for things from the surface to get into the well, so it is something to take seriously.”