National Groundwater Awareness Week Highlights Our Groundwater Resources

Mar 13, 2019

By Susan Boser

In Pennsylvania, over one million homes and farms rely on groundwater as their primary source of drinking water. Groundwater and surface water resources are interconnected, so taking care of all our water resources only contributes to the overall health of our drinking water supplies.

Below are some groundwater facts from the National Groundwater Association:

Only 1 percent of the water on Earth is usable, 99 percent of which is groundwater.
The United States uses 349 billion gallons of freshwater every day.
Groundwater is 20 to 30 times larger than all U.S. lakes, streams, and rivers combined.
Groundwater accounts for 33 percent of all the water used by U.S. municipalities.
44 percent of the U.S. population depends on groundwater for its drinking water supply.
More than 13.2 million households have their own well, representing 34 million people.
53.5 billion gallons of groundwater are used for agricultural irrigation each day. In 1990 that number was 2.2 billion.
The largest U.S. aquifer is Ogallala, underlying 250,000 square miles stretching from Texas to South Dakota. Scientists estimate it could take 6,000 years to naturally refill the aquifer if it were ever fully depleted.
California pumps 10.7 billion gallons of groundwater each day, a third more than the second-highest state, Texas.
Groundwater is the world’s most extracted raw material with withdrawal rates in the estimated range of 259 trillion gallons per year.

Source:psu.edu

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