Data Series 301
U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Data Series 301
Ground water comprises nearly half of the water used for public supply in California (Hutson and others, 2004). To assess the quality of ground water in aquifers used for drinking-water supply and to establish a program for monitoring trends in ground-water quality, the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB), in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), implemented the Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment (GAMA) Program (http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/gama). The GAMA program consists of three projects: Statewide Basin Assessment, conducted by the USGS (http://ca.water.usgs.gov/gama/); Voluntary Domestic Well Assessment, conducted by the SWRCB; and Special Studies, conducted by LLNL.
The SWRCB initiated the GAMA Statewide Basin Assessment project in response to the Groundwater Quality Monitoring Act of 2001 (Sections 10780-10782.3 of the California Water Code, Assembly Bill 599). AB 599 is a public mandate to assess and monitor the quality of ground water used as public supply for municipalities in California. The project is a comprehensive assessment of statewide ground-water quality designed to help better understand and identify risks to ground-water resources, and to increase the availability of information about ground-water quality to the public. As part of the AB 599 process, the USGS, in collaboration with the SWRCB, developed the monitoring plan for the project (Belitz and others, 2003; State Water Resources Control Board, 2003). Key aspects of the project are inter-agency collaboration and cooperation with local water agencies and well owners. Local participation in the project is entirely voluntary.
The GAMA Statewide Basin Assessment project is unique because the data collected during the study include analyses for an extensive number of chemical constituents at very low concentrations, analyses that are not normally available. A broader understanding of ground-water composition will be especially useful for providing an early indication of changes in water quality, and for identifying the natural and human factors affecting water quality. Additionally, the GAMA Statewide Basin Assessment project will analyze a broader suite of constituents than required by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). An understanding of the occurrence and distribution of these constituents is important for the long-term management and protection of ground-water resources.
The range of hydrologic, geologic, and climatic conditions that exist in California must be considered in an assessment of ground-water quality. Belitz and others (2003) partitioned the state into ten hydrogeologic provinces, each with distinctive hydrologic, geologic, and climatic characteristics (fig. 1), and representative regions in all ten provinces were included in the project design. Eighty percent of California’s approximately 16,000 public-supply wells are located in ground-water basins within these hydrologic provinces. These ground-water basins, defined by the California Department of Water Resources, generally consist of relatively permeable, unconsolidated deposits of alluvial or volcanic origin (California Department of Water Resources, 2003). Ground-water basins were prioritized for sampling based upon the number of public-supply wells in the basin, with secondary consideration given to municipal ground-water use, agricultural pumping, the number of leaking underground fuel tanks, and pesticide applications within the basins (Belitz and others, 2003). In addition, some ground-water basins or groups of adjacent similar basins with relatively few public-supply wells were assigned high priority so that all hydrogeologic provinces would be represented in the subset of basins sampled. The 116 priority basins were grouped into 35 study units. Some areas not in the defined ground-water basins were included in several of the study units to achieve representation of the 20 percent of public-supply wells not located in the ground-water basins.
Three types of water-quality assessments are being conducted with the data collected in each study unit: (1) Status: assessment of the current quality of the ground-water resource, (2) Trends: detection of changes in ground-water quality, and (3) Understanding: identification of the natural and human factors affecting ground-water quality (Kulongoski and Belitz, 2004). This report is one of a series of reports presenting assessments of current water-quality conditions in each study unit (Wright and others, 2005; Kulongoski and others, 2006; Bennett and others, 2006; Dawson and others, 2007; Kulongoski and Belitz, 2007). Subsequent interpretive reports will address the trends and understanding aspects of the water-quality assessments.
The Southern Sierra GAMA study unit, hereafter referred to as SOSA, contains six small ground-water basins and also encompasses areas outside of the defined ground-water basins. SOSA was considered high priority for sampling to provide adequate representation of the Sierra Nevada hydrogeologic province (Belitz and others, 2003).
The purposes of this report are: (1) to describe the hydrogeologic setting of SOSA, (2) to detail the sampling and analytical methods, and quality assurance used during the study, (3) to present the results of quality-control tests, and (4) to present the analytical results for ground-water samples collected in SOSA. Ground-water samples were analyzed for organic, inorganic, and microbial constituents, field parameters, and chemical tracers. The chemical and microbial data presented in this report were evaluated by comparison to state and federal drinking water regulatory and other health-based standards that are applied to treated drinking water. Regulatory thresholds considered for this report are those established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). The data presented in this report are intended to characterize the quality of untreated ground-water resources within the study unit, not the treated drinking water delivered to consumers by water purveyors. Discussions of the factors that influence the distribution and occurrence of the constituents detected in ground-water samples will be the subject of subsequent publications.
The authors thank the following cooperators for their support: the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB), California Department of Public Health, California Department of Water Resources, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. We especially thank the well owners and water purveyors for their generosity in allowing the USGS to collect samples from their wells. Two reviewers, Jan Stepek (SWRCB) and Justin Kulongoski (USGS), provided comments to improve this work. Funding for this work was provided by State bonds authorized by Proposition 50 and administered by the SWRCB.
U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: https://pubs.usgs.gov/ds/301
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