Proceedings of the 2019 Mississippi Water Resources Conference

Year: 2019 Authors: Banks J.

The Office of Land and Water Resources (OLWR) is charged with conserving, managing, and protecting the water resources of Mississippi. Sufficient spatial coverage of water level monitoring within a short period of time is critical to the characterization of an aquifer. The Monitoring Branch of the Water Resources Division developed a comprehensive plan to provide OLWR with a detailed view of water levels in the state's major drinking water aquifers by starting in the northeast corner of the state and working to the south and west. Work to measure these water levels throughout Mississippi is being accomplished as efficiently as possible by utilizing all staff in the Branch to focus on monitoring in one area at a time. This work also accomplishes the Monitoring Branch goals of characterizing available water resources in prioritized municipal areas throughout the state each fiscal year. The prioritized areas being studied for fiscal year 2019 are the Ripley aquifer, the Coffee Sand aquifer, the Eutaw-McShan aquifer, and the Gordo aquifer, which are drinking water sources for much of northeast Mississippi, including the cities of Starkville, Amory, and New Albany.