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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Special Volumes

Abstract


Pub. Id: A071 (1965)

First Page: 327

Last Page: 341

Book Title: M 4: Fluids in Subsurface Environments

Article/Chapter: Ground Water in Southwestern Region

Subject Group: Oil--Methodology and Concepts

Spec. Pub. Type: Memoir

Pub. Year: 1965

Author(s): Charles V. Theis (2)

Abstract:

Ground-water irrigation in the Southwestern Region developed explosively after World War II. Most of the water used is being taken from storage. Reserves are rapidly being depleted and, in the light of present knowledge, changes in the economy of large areas must take place within a generation. The importance of ground water in this area has led to the development of physical and legal ground-water concepts of general application.

The Roswell area is now over-developed and the rate of use of ground water there must decrease in the future. The immediate effects of drilling artesian wells in the early years of the century led to the New Mexico law adopting the principle of priority for the right to use ground water.

Irrigation on the Llano Estacado in Texas is depleting a reserve of perhaps 150,000,000 acre-feet of water at the rate of about 5,000,000 acre-feet a year. The great size and essentially simple character of this aquifer led to the development of a time-dependent theory of ground-water movement, and, together with a dramatic fall of the water table, led to a judicial determination that this water body, and by inference others, is a depleting resource.

Pumping of stream-connected alluvial aquifers like those of the Rio Grande and the Pecos depletes the flow of the stream in the same amount at some time in the future. The principle has been recognized in the administration of ground water in New Mexico. At a distance, this effect of pumping is so long delayed that all the water pumped may be considered taken from storage. In Reeves County the water table has fallen as much as 160 feet in eight years.

Bolson aquifers have a base perennial yield which is apparently being exceeded in the Salt Basin of Hudspeth County. Bolson aquifers in southwestern New Mexico are being pumped essentially from storage.

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