Groundwater, Aquifers, Wells, and Springs

A U.S. Geological Survey assessment of more than 20,000 wells nationwide shows that untreated groundwater in 25 states has a high prevalence of being potentially corrosive. The states with the largest percentage of wells with potentially corrosive groundwater are located primarily in the Northeast, the Southeast, and the Northwest. These FAQs were written in conjunction with that study. In...

As one of several Focus Area Studies within the USGS National Water Census (NWC), the USGS has completed a 3-year study of water availability and use in the Colorado River Basin.

Some water is just unpleasant to drink—it’s cloudy, or it smells or tastes bad. Some drinking water discolors teeth or skin, stains laundry or plumbing fixtures, or corrodes or clogs pipes. These effects are caused when some naturally occurring constituents occur at concentrations high enough to be a nuisance, and are particularly common where groundwater is used as a drinking water supply.

Is water quality getting better or worse? Answering this deceptively simple question has been a fundamental objective of the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Project’s research. Learn about trends in contaminants in the nation’s streams and rivers, trends in contaminants that collect in the bed sediment of streams and lakes, and changes in the quality of the nation’s groundwater.

Stream, river, and lake bed sediment are reservoirs for many contaminants. These contaminants include some “legacy” contaminants, like DDT, PCBs, and chlordane, and chemicals currently in use, like the insecticide bifenthrin and many flame retardants. Learn about techniques used to study sediment-associated contaminants and their importance to aquatic biota.

Although calcium carbonate reaction kinetics has important application in several areas of Earth Science, the mechanism of natural organic matter mediation of carbonate minerals growth and dissolution rates remains largely unknown. This project uses multiple approaches to study calcium carbonate formation and dissolution rates in surface water and groundwater systems.