Abstract
Groundwater quality and quantity in Alabama’s coastal system are affected by natural and anthropogenic stressors, including most notably, climatic variations, tropical storms and hurricanes, sea-water intrusion, land-use changes, agricultural activities, and water usage due to increasing public-supply, industrial and irrigation demands. Monitoring activities established by the Geological Survey of Alabama Groundwater Assessment Program (GSA-GAP) are designed to evaluate these stressors on the Miocene aquifer, a three-component system comprised of shallow, middle, and deep zones, which supplies most of the groundwater to the region. Domestic wells are primarily sourced from the shallow zone, and public-supply, industrial, and agricultural wells derive groundwater from the middle and deep zones. Changes in hydraulic head, as reflected by water level and primarily due to usage, in all zones, are evaluated through two GSA-GAP monitoring networks, a periodic network and a real-time network. Water levels in periodic network wells are measured bi-yearly. Water level and specific conductance in real-time network wells are continuously monitored. Several of these wells are used to inform the Monitoring and Impact Group of the Alabama Drought Assessment and Planning Team. Specific conductance changes are evaluated to provide insight on potential contamination effects from tropical storm surge and hurricanes and are supplemented with data derived from groundwater analyses collected from piezometers installed along the Gulf Coast beach front. A new program recently initiated by the GSA-GAP uses major parameter analytical results from groundwater collected from public-supply wells in conjunction with historical results to evaluate long-term quality changes due to pumping. A concerted effort is being made to expand these networks to improve these assessments and to be proactive in the evaluation of Alabama’s coastal groundwater system.
