Water withdrawals by source and category in Louisiana Parishes, 2014-2015

Information concerning the availability, use, and quality of water in the 64 parishes of Louisiana is critical for water-supply management. In cooperation with the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Lower Mississippi-Gulf (LMG) Water Science Center has been collecting, compiling, and publishing water-withdrawal and water-use information on a 5-year basis since 1960. That data are available to the public on a web interface at https://la.water.usgs.gov/WaterUse/default.asp and can be queried at the state or parish level by source type (groundwater or surface water) and/or water use category (public supply, industry, power generation, rural domestic, livestock, rice irrigation, general irrigation, and aquaculture) for years 1960-2014. Additionally, data for years 2012-2014 are available at the parish level by aquifer or basin. However, data in the report and on the web page are not presented by parish, water-use category, and source simultaneously. This data release contains water withdrawn in 2014 and 2015 tabulated by parish, water-use category, source type, and designated source name. The 2014 data are tabulated by aquifer for groundwater sources and major water body for surface-water sources. The 2015 source data are tabulated by major aquifer for groundwater sources and by major surface-water basin (as defined in the 5-year water use compilations reports published by the USGS LMG Water Science Center) for surface-water sources. The estimated groundwater withdrawals in 2014 in Louisiana were 1,870 million gallons per day (MGD) and surface water was 7,430 MGD, totaling to approximately 9,300 MGD. In 2015, it was estimated that a total of 8,720 MGD were withdrawn in Louisiana, of which 1,750 originated from groundwater resources and 6,970 MGD from surface-water resources.