ABSTRACT

St. Tammany Parish is one of the most rapidly growing areas in the Gulf coast region, yet this area has had little in the way of detailed hydrogeologic study. The parish is located in southeastern Louisiana on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain about 30 miles from downtown New Orleans which makes it an ideal "bedroom" community for the metropolitan area. The cities of Slidell, Mandeville, and Covington are the largest urban sites in an area that has seen most of the growth occur in rural regions outside of city limits. Consequently, there is no unified approach to the development of ground water resources.

St. Tammany Parish experienced a population growth of over 30% between 1980 and 1990. If this trend continues then the last decade of this century will see a population increase of over 40,000. Increases of this magnitude will likely place additional stresses on the already rapidly developing water resources. Although the parish generally has an adequate supply of good quality water, there have been several instances of aquifers which are tapped by over 27 public and private water supply organizations all overseen by four state and several federal agencies. With this type of haphazard development and overlapping responsibilities, it is exceedingly difficult, perhaps impossible, to come up with a method of properly evaluating ground water usage.

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