Water Resource Plan

The water resource issue I have chosen is aquifer depletion. I chose this because we live near an aquifer zone and may people here rely on the aquifer as a water resource. At times, our aquifer zone is at critical levels especially when there is a drought. Our aquifer zone is a recharge zone and is vital to recharge the Edward’s Aquifer.

Our aquifer zone is valuable to many people that live outside of the city limits. They cannot get city water and depend on water wells. Having the water wells has a great impact on our aquifer. Those with water wells have no other means of getting water for their home and that causes the water level in the aquifer to drop. When it rains a lot our aquifer stays at a safe level but when we are in a drought our aquifer water level also drops. If so many people did not have to rely on water wells it would help our aquifer water levels stay up. There is not much we can do about people who have to have water wells and affect our aquifer.

The only way we can help our aquifer is if we can get city water service to as many people as we can who use water wells. Our city water supply does not come out of our aquifer and that would help immensely if we could do that. The only issue that would arise is having the money to do it. We are a very poor county and many of our citizens would probably be opposed of the proposition, even if we could get grants to do the project. Many of the ranchers here also depend on the aquifer. They water their fields and the water supply comes from the aquifer. If they could find other means of watering their fields that could also help the levels stay up to where they need to be.

Trying to get city water sources to people who live outside of the city limits would be a big challenge. There are many people who live outside the city limits, more than in the city limits, and most are not very close to town. Another challenge would be getting the communities to agree to the project. Most of them like having water wells, not only is the water better but they also do not have a water bill to pay. The only limitations that would probably come along are only being able to supply a small percentage of people with city water. If we were able to do this we would not be able to include everyone. Some live out as far as 20 miles and are in the aquifer zone. Even if we could get people to get water from the rivers that would also cause a drop in water resources. We need our rivers to have water, if not all fish, turtles, and organisms would die.

People do not realize how important our rivers and aquifer zones are. They think that we will never go dry and have water whenever we need it. I found this information and thought it was interesting. It talks about how important an aquifer zone is and why the levels need to stay up. People need to be educated on this so that they know how important it is to keep our aquifer at safe levels. “An aquifer can be compared to a bank account, and ground water occurring in an aquifer is analogous to the money in the account. Hydrologists refer to this type of accounting as a water budget. Ground water can be recharged (deposited) by infiltration from precipitation, surface water, or applied irrigation water; it can be kept in storage (saved); and it can be discharged naturally to streams, springs, or seeps, or transpired by plants (withdrawn). In a ground-water system prior to development, the system is in long-term equilibrium—discharge