Do you know where your water comes from? Pipes? The Puget Sound? Amazingly, I have received these answers more than once and not from little kids either. In Kitsap County we get our drinking water from the sky. Yes, bless these drippy winters because eighty percent of us here in Kitsap use groundwater that is the result of rain percolating through the topsoil into the ground. Here are a bundle of facts about groundwater you need to know.- There is not an underground river that we tap into. Our groundwater is stored in between the spaces of rocks and gravel which comprise our aquifers. Picture pouring water into a cup of gravel.
- We do not get any recharge from snow pack in the Olympic or Cascade Mountains. The water we have falls on our peninsula. What you see is what you get.
- Groundwater will not recharge through impervious surfaces. We need vegetated areas to allow rainwater to soak into the ground. Native vegetation is the best. Grass can actually cause rainwater to run off similar to a parking lot.
- Our wells don't all pump water from the same aquifer. Separate glacial events formed our aquifers over hundreds of thousands of years. Some aquifers are shallower than others. Some are even what we call perched aquifers.
- Most of our wells are artesian. This means they are under the pressure of impermeable confining layers separating our aquifers. Some of this water is under such pressure that it bubbles up to the surface. Think of a spring fed lake.
- Groundwater feeds our streams. Groundwater is always moving to the surface. How fast depends on the materials it is moving through. You can see groundwater seeping out through cliffs at the beach.
- Anything that is put onto the ground has the potential of winding up in our water supply. Think about that before applying herbicides to your lawn!
Most of us drink groundwater. Now you know.
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