If you live or work in ‘Happy Valley’ or another area of the Spring Creek Watershed, you are almost certainly drinking and using groundwater every day, because groundwater is the source of more than 99% of all of our watershed’s public and private water supplies. This means that life as we know it would be impossible without groundwater. It is our watershed’s (and the world’s) most extracted resource. About 85% of the total annual runoff water in Spring Creek is groundwater, and thus it is responsible for the ecosystem in Spring Creek and its tributaries that provides the high-quality trout habitat.
Until it comes out of your faucet, groundwater is invisible to you, unless you tour Penn’s Cave or use a flashlight to look down into your water well. So don’t take groundwater for granted. It is in your life every day. During National Groundwater Awareness Week, March 10 – 16, 2019, do your part by letting others know about the importance of groundwater and asking them to pass it along.
The following articles on this Web Atlas focus specifically on the groundwater in the Spring Creek Watershed:
This pamphlet: Groundwater: A Primer For Pennsylvanians provides information about groundwater throughout Pennsylvania.
Todd is a groundwater geologist who has been studying the groundwater resources of the Spring Creek Watershed for more than 50 years. You may contact him at toddgiddings@verizon.net .