Ground-water Management in Coastal Georgia and Adjacent Parts of South Carolina and Florida: I. Ground-water Resources and Constraints to Development

Proceedings of the 1997 Georgia Water Resources Conference, March 20-22, 1997, Athens, Georgia.Current use and future demands for water in the coastal area of Georgia and adjacent parts of South Carolina and Florida affect all three States. Pumpage from the Floridan aquifer system—an extremely permeable, paleokarst, carbonate water-bearing sequence—has resulted in substantial water-level declines and subsequent encroachment of seawater into the aquifer at the northern end of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina; and in saltwater intrusion of the aquifer at Brunswick, Georgia; and near Jacksonville, Florida. Although the mechanisms vary by which encroachment and intrusion occur, all hypotheses indicate that pumpage from the Floridan aquifer system has caused ground-water level decline and a reduction in hydrostatic pressure, and has allowed saltwater to enter the freshwater part of the system. This situation has constrained further development of the Floridan aquifer system in the coastal area.Sponsored and Organized by: U.S. Geological Survey, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, The University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of TechnologyThis book was published by the Institute of Ecology, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602 with partial funding provided by the U.S. Department of Interior, Geological Survey, through the Georgia Water Research Institutes Authorization Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-397). The views and statements advanced in this publication are solely those of the authors and do not represent official views or policies of the University of Georgia or the U.S. Geological Survey or the conference sponsors