Aquaculture, domestic, irrigation, and livestock water withdrawals from the Sparta aquifer by parish in Louisiana, 2023

Since 1975, annual water use for Louisiana has been published on a 5-year basis and is used for a variety of purposes. As the Sparta aquifer is a heavily used aquifer, is the sole source of groundwater for many parishes in Louisiana, and recent withdrawals have exceeded the Sparta’s natural recharge, a more frequent compilation of water usage for the Sparta aquifer in Louisiana is needed to inform State conservation groups and efforts, private and public entities, and to feed groundwater models. In cooperation with the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development and the Sparta Groundwater Conservation District, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Lower Mississippi-Gulf (LMG) Water Science Center collected and compiled water-withdrawal and water-use information for a four-year period, 2020–2023. The methodology followed previous 5-year reports, such as those described in Collier and Sargent, 2018. 

This data release contains water withdrawn for aquaculture, domestic, irrigation, and livestock use from the Sparta aquifer in 2023, tabulated by parish and water-use category. The estimated domestic withdrawals in 2023 from the Sparta aquifer in Louisiana were 1.30 million gallons per day (Mgal/d), irrigation was 1.48 Mgal/d (0.19 Mgal/d for general irrigation and 1.29 Mgal/d for rice irrigation) and livestock was 0.13 Mgal/d, totaling to approximately 2.91 Mgal/d. There were no withdrawals for aquaculture.