The Delaware Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, completed a groundwater-monitoring, infrastructure-construction, and data-collection project in southern New Castle and northern Kent Counties, Delaware.
The DGS has been a data provider for the National Ground-Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN) since 2016. NGWMN is a consortium of state and local agencies and the U.S.
DGS holds data on millions of groundwater observations.
The Delaware Geologic Information Resource (DGIR) is an online data display tool and map viewer for a variety of geologic and hydrologic information released by the Delaware Geological Survey. It was designed to deliver the most commonly available and requested geologic and hydrologic information that is appropriate for use in hydrologic studies, required by regulation and ordinance, and to support state resource management decisions.
The Delaware Geological Survey (DGS) currently monitors groundwater levels in a network of wells in Delaware. Long time-series of water levels in major aquifers serve as critical baseline data for resource management and analyses of aquifer response to pumping, climatic variability, drought hazards, seawater intrusion, and interaction with streams and their ecosystems.
To understand the effects of projected increased demands on groundwater for water supply, a finite-difference, steady-state, groundwater flow model was used to simulate groundwater flow in the Coastal Plain sediments of southern New Castle County, Delaware. The model simulated flow in the Columbia (water table), Rancocas, Mt. Laurel, combined Magothy/Potomac A, Potomac B, and Potomac C aquifers, and intervening confining beds.
The following table displays the correlation of hydrologic units to geologic units recognized by the Delaware Geological Survey in the Atlantic Coastal Plain.
Ground water comprises nearly all of the water supply in Kent County, Delaware. The confined aquifers of the area are an important part of this resource base. The aim of this study is to provide an up-to-date geologic framework for the confined aquifers of Kent County, with a focus on their stratigraphy and correlation. Seven confined aquifers are used for water supply in Kent County. All occur at progressively greater depths south-southeastward, paralleling the overall dip of the sedimentary section that underlies the state.
This map shows the saturated thickness of the water-table aquifer. This aquifer consists of the deposits of the Columbia Formation and those portions of the Magothy and Englishtown-Mt. Laurel formations, and Rancocas Group that are hydraulically connected with the Columbia deposits (see Groot, Demicco, and Cherry, 1983). For example, large, saturated thicknesses in the zone trending northeast-southwest near Townsend reflect the addition of the sands of the Rancocas Group to the total thickness of the sands of the overlying Columbia Formation.
