Groundwater conditions in Utah, spring of 2010

This is the forty-seventh in a series of annual reports that describe groundwater conditions in Utah. Reports in this series, published cooperatively by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Resources and Division of Water Rights, and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Quality, provide data to enable interested parties to maintain awareness of changing groundwater conditions.

This report, like the others in the series, contains information on well construction, groundwater withdrawal from wells, water-level changes, precipitation, streamflow, and chemical quality of water. Information on well construction included in this report refers only to wells constructed for new appropriations of groundwater. Supplementary data are included in reports of this series only for those years or areas which are important to a discussion of changing groundwater conditions and for which applicable data are available.

This report includes individual discussions of selected significant areas of groundwater development in the State for calendar year 2009. Most of the reported data were collected by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Resources and Division of Water Rights, and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Quality. This report is also available online at http://www. waterrights.utah.gov/techinfo/ and http://ut.water.usgs.gov/ publications/GW2010.pdf. Groundwater conditions in Utah for calendar year 2008 are reported in Burden and others (2009) and available online at http://ut.water.usgs.gov/publications/ GW2009.pdf.

Analytical results associated with water samples collected from each area of groundwater development were compared to State of Utah maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) and secondary drinking-water standards of routinely measureable substances present in water supplies. The MCLs and secondary drinking-water standards can be accessed online at http://www.rules.utah.gov/publicat/code/r309/r309-200. htm#T5. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drinking-water standards can be accessed at http://www.epa. gov/safewater/mcl.html#mcls. Maximum contaminant levels and secondary drinking-water standards were developed for public water systems and do not apply to the majority of wells sampled during this study.

Every 5 years, this report series includes maps depicting comparisons of 30-year changes in water levels for each of the major areas of groundwater development. The water-level change maps in this report show the difference between water levels measured in 1980 and in 2010. Water-level rises or declines occurring on shorter time scales are shown in plots of annual water-level measurements for several wells in each of the major areas of groundwater development.