Investigating Groundwater Systems on Regional and National Scales (2000) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Groundwater and Society
Groundwater and Society
Pages 6-24
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From page 6... ...
The WRD has established a Ground-Water Resources Program (GWRP) to "examine and report on critical issues affecting the sustainability of the nation's ground-water resources." Four activities have been given top priority (USGS, 1998~: · Scientific assessments of critical groundwater issues: Key issues identified by the USGS include groundwater depletion, groundwatersurface water interactions, freshwater/saltwater relations, and groundwater processes in complex geologic environments.
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From page 7... ...
The wording of the USGS priority of "scientific assessments of critical groundwater issues" allows latitude in balancing problem-driven research with core research. However, the committee believes that core research should not be done ad hoc but should be approached explicitly and systematically, as a vital component of a national groundwater program.
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7. What tools and methods for streamlining core research and problem-centered research hold the most promise for development and use by the WRD?
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From page 9... ...
In the San Antonio, Texas, area, the Edwards aquifer is the sole source of drinking water for over ~ million people. Similarly, in the Middle Rio Grande basin, the Santa Fe Group aquifer system is the sole source of municipal supply for the city of Albuquerque and many of the surrounding communities, serving about 40 percent of New Mexico's population.
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From page 10... ...
Streamflow and Ecosystems In the past few decades, the coupling of surface and groundwater systems has become increasingly apparent. Groundwater-surface water interaction is now recognized as the primary control for such processes as wetland function and riparian habitat maintenance and the geochemical and hydrologic fluxes across the recharge and discharge boundaries of shallow aquifer systems.
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From page 11... ...
Similarly, riparian buffers are increasingly recognized as playing a crucial role in mitigating the flux of nutrients and flood water for large systems such as the Missouri and Mississippi River basins and Chesapeake Bay. The biological and riparian processes controlling nutrient loads and critical habitats for migratory waterfowl and endangered species in these unique environments are dependent on groundwater-surface water interactions over the range of riparian flow regimes.
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In some cases, direct injection of liquid waste into aquifers has been utilized as a waste disposal "technology" in residuals management. By the 1950s, the contamination of the nation's waters by mining, agricultural and industrial chemicals, and sewage had so compromised water supplies that a broad array of federal and state environmental laws and statutes were enacted (NRC, 1993, 1998~.
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introduction 15
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16 Investigating Groundwater Systems an agricultural region covering most of southeastern Washington state has a median nitrate concentration of 9.3 mg/L as nitrogen (the EPA drinking-water standard is 10 mg/L) (Nolan et al., 1998~.
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. Sinkholes, a particular form of subsidence, are common in the southeastern United States, where pumping from carbonate aquifers has induced collapse.
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. Over 3,000 recharge basins, serving to control drainage and manage groundwater resources, blanket Nassau and Suffolk Counties, Long Island (Ku and Aaronson, 1992~.
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Large-scaTe groundwater depletion has substantial economic costs associated with increases in pumping costs and reduced well yields. However, the economic value of groundwater extraction varies with energy costs and market prices for irrigated agricultural crops.
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and Southwestern GroundWater Resources Project (http://az.water.usgs.gov/swgwrp/Pages/Overview.htmI) are examples of projects involving fully appropriated surface
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In fact, throughout much of the southwestern United States, surface water is virtually fully appropriated or, in some cases, overappropriated. Significant regional municipal and irrigation demands may directly conflict with riparian environmental requirements, critical to these fragile ecosystems.
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From page 22... ...
Groundwater-surface water interactions are especially complex in the heterogeneous, unlithified materials that characterize this region, and fluxes into and out of the subsurface are particularly sensitive to changes in land use and surface drainage associated with urbanization. The spatial distribution of recharge and discharge, aIreacly highly irregular in these heterogeneous sediments, is made further complex in urban areas by impermeable surfaces, leaky pipes, interbasin transfers, and variable land use.
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From page 23... ...
Resource assessment, recognizing the inherent variability of recharge, flow, and transport processes, is inherently incompatible with the institutional structures that manage water through property rights. Appropriative water law, which treats the rights to water as a static deterministic property right and adheres to the premises of "first in time, first in right" and "if you don't use it, you lose it," raises institutional obstacles to integrated conjunctive management of surface and subsurface water supplies in that it does not adequately account for the inherent spatial and temporal variabilities in groundwater and surface water stocks and flows and for groundwater-surface water interconnections.
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From page 24... ...
But groundwater's role as a component of the hydrologic cycle is equally important. Groundwater has a critical function in maintaining ecosystems, and its connection to surface water dictates that groundwater and surface water must be treated and managed as a single resource (Winter et al., 1998~.
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