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Section Two: The Fundamentals of Groundwater
A Valuable Resource
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For the most part, you can’t see it...So just what is groundwater? And why would it matter if some of the water held beneath the earth contained the residues of pesticide applications? Groundwater may be out of sight, but it is certainly not out of use and should not be out of mind. More than half the U.S. population relies on groundwater for drinking water. 1 Included in that number are 97 percent of the nation's rural households1 and more than one-third of the 100 largest U.S. cities.2 More than 15 million private drinking water wells — many of which tap into relatively shallow groundwaters — serve an estimated 40 million Americans. 3 |
Groundwater is used for food-processing, for industrial process water, boiler feed water and industrial cooling water; groundwater is critical to the nation's agricultural sector for both irrigation and livestock water. In fact, groundwater is the source of approximately 33 percent of agriculture's irrigation water and 17 percent of freshwater for self-supplied industries. 1
Over the years, demands on water in general and groundwater in particular have grown. From 1950 through 1980, U.S. consumption of groundwater nearly tripled, increasing from 34 billion gallons per day to 83 billion gallons per day. 4 Since then higher water prices and water conservation programs have helped to lower water consumption per person, but growing population and competing demands on rivers and lakes may continue to drive the need for groundwater supplies.
In addition to filling these myriad uses, groundwater serves a critical but often overlooked function in the hydrologic cycle. The quality of groundwater directly affects the quality of the nation's rivers and streams, with an average of about 40 percent of the country's surface water flows originating in groundwater 1 and nearly a billion gallons of groundwater per day seeping into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 5
1. US Geological Survey, National Water Summary 1986: Hydrologic Events and Ground-Water Quality, Water Supply Paper 2325.
2. American Institute of Professional Geologists, Ground Water: Issues and Answers, 1983.
3. American Groundwater Trust, Bacteria and Wells, Public Information Pamphlet # 10, available at <http://www.agwt.org/index.htm>; National Ground Water Association and National Water Well Owners Association, The Ground Water Story, "Rural Americans Prefer Their Wells, National Survey Confirms," available at <http://www.wellowner.org/survey.htm>.
4. US Geological Survey, "Estimated use of water in the United States in 1990: Trends in Water Use," available at <http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/wutrends.html>.
5. The Conservation Foundation, A Guide to Groundwater Pollution: Problems, Causes, and Government Responses, 1987.
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Posted January 7, 2000
Copyright Friends of the Earth, 2000
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