National water summary 1986: Hydrologic events and ground-water quality

Abstract

National Water Summary 1986 Hydrologic Events and Ground-Water Quality is the fourth in a series of annual reports that describe the conditions, trends, availability, quality, and use of the Nation's water resources. This year's report continues a discussion, begun in the 1984 National Water Summary, of principal aquifers in each State by assembling available information about the existing water quality of each aquifer, the location of major areas of known contamination and potential sources of contamination, and steps being taken by the States to manage their ground water. This subject is particularly timely because of the growing national awareness and concern that this important source of water supply is vulnerable to contamination by toxic industrial, domestic, and agricultural wastes.The U.S. Geological Survey has been engaged in the study of the quantity and quality of ground-water resources of the United States for more than a century. Survey geologists early noted the importance of hydrogeologic information to the search for ground-water supplies in the plains country around Denver, Colo. S.F. Emmons, Geologist-in-Charge of the Division of the Rocky Mountains, included the following observation in his 1884 annual report to Director John Wesley Powell:The practical bearing of this study [of the Denver water supply] is not confined to Denver, but extends to the whole region of the great plains. While the existence of a synclinal basin has long been known to us from the hasty observations one makes in simply passing over the country, accurate and reliable maps and profiles are an indispensible basis for the observations which shall determine the true source of the water supply, the amount and quality that may be expected from different geologic horizons, and the most favorable points for sinking artesian wells; it is in large degree owing to the want of this accurate preliminary knowledge that the money already appropriated by Congress and spent in sinking artesian wells upon the plains of Colorado has been so barren of practical and definite results. (U.

Urban Groundwater

“…Some of the more comprehensive pesticide studies have been carried out in the USA where pesticide usage has always been extremely high and groundwater provides drinking water for over 50 percent of the population (Moody et al, 1988;Barbash et al, 1996).…”