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Aquifers of the United States Withdrawal rates from the Ogallala Aquifer.. This is a list of some aquifers in the United States.. Map of major US aquifers by rock type. An aquifer is a geologic formation, a group of formations, or a part of a formation that contains sufficient saturated permeable material to yield significant quantities of water to groundwater wells and springs.
The Ogallala Aquifer (oh-gə-LAH-lə) is a shallow water table aquifer surrounded by sand, silt, clay, and gravel located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. As one of the world's largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately 174,000 sq mi (450,000 km 2) in portions of eight states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas). [1]
Many states, especially in the western United States, claim ownership of groundwater and allocate the resource through an appropriative system just as they would any surface right. Typically water rights are appropriated based on each aquifer's sustainable yield, and once all the rights are granted no further permits will be issued. Some states ...
Groundwater is often cheaper, more convenient and less vulnerable to pollution than surface water. Therefore, it is commonly used for public drinking water supplies. For example, groundwater provides the largest source of usable water storage in the United States, and California annually withdraws the largest amount of groundwater of all the ...
Aquifers of the United States. Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains aquifer; Biscayne Aquifer; Bruceian aquifer; Cambro-Ordovician aquifer system; California Central Valley aquifer system; Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer; Edwards Aquifer; Englishtown aquifer; Floridan aquifer; Great Miami aquifer; Kirkwood–Cohansey aquifer; Lloyd aquifer
However, not all the water is usable. Over half of the groundwater is unavailable due to poor quality and the high cost of pumping the water from the ground. While surface water is concentrated mostly in the northern part of the state, groundwater is more evenly distributed. [5] The largest groundwater reservoirs are found in the Central Valley ...
Explore current groundwater conditions in this interactive map: Patterns emerged. Many of the communities most exposed to flooding were built along historical creeks or on top of filled-in wetlands.
In the United States, the biggest users of water from aquifers include agricultural irrigation and oil and coal extraction. [30] "Cumulative total groundwater depletion in the United States accelerated in the late 1940s and continued at an almost steady linear rate through the end of the century.