Cascade Business News - Understanding the Age of Groundwater
BY CBN
Help Tell the Story of Groundwater:
The water stored in aquifers takes anywhere from months to millennia to be replenished. We rarely know how much water is stored in an aquifer but understanding the age of groundwater can help determine how renewable it is, and how fast groundwater can be withdrawn sustainably. The Nature Conservancy is leading a new project to estimate the age of groundwater across the state to help communities plan for a sustainable water future.
Over the next 18 months, we will be sampling water from wells and springs in areas that are most representative of Oregon’s groundwater to look at isotopes of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. These isotopes will help tell a story about when that water fell as precipitation. These origin stories matter for responsible water management: it’s easier to achieve sustainable water use if when aquifers replenish quickly than if they take tens of thousands of years to replenish. Ultimately, the results of this work will inform community planning efforts by highlighting aquifers that are most likely to sustainably meet future domestic and agricultural needs.
Oregon’s communities and ecosystems rely on groundwater.
- 77% of Oregonians get their drinking water from groundwater.
- More than 5,000 of Oregon’s farms use groundwater for irrigation.
- Oregon has over 36,000 miles of rivers, 34 million acres of lakes, and 84 million acres of wetlands that are supported by groundwater.
TNC is seeking opportunities to collaborate with domestic well owners, irrigators, and public water systems, to collect a small amount of raw (pretreatment) water for this study. Sampling takes less than an hour and is unintrusive. Well-specific data will be provided to collaborators but individual results and well locations will not be made public.
Please contact Zach Freed (zach.freed@tnc.org) and Dr. Claire Ruffing (claire.ruffing@tnc.org) to learn if your well is a good candidate for this project.
