Groundwater is an important resource, providing 22% of public drinking water in the Hampton Roads Region. The region is located within the Eastern Virginia Groundwater Management Area (EVGWMA) which was enacted to preserve the available water quantity of state aquifers. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) administers groundwater permits for withdrawals >300,000 gallons per month within the EVGWMA.

The HRPDC has recently released two different educational tools that depict active groundwater permits and historic groundwater levels within the EVGWMA.

2020 Active Groundwater Permit Summary

The first tool is the 2020 Active Groundwater Permit Summary, which was releasedas both a pdf and an interactive map.This tool includes data on:

• How the groundwater withdrawals are used
• The aquifers that water is permitted to be withdrawn from
• The active groundwater permits located in each locality
• Groundwater permit details

The interactive viewer can be accessed by clicking the image to the right.

The pdf version can be downloaded here.

Historical Groundwater Levels in the Potomac Aquifer

The most used aquifer (accounting for over 93% of groundwater withdrawals in 2018) is the Potomac Aquifer, the EVGWMA’s deepest and thickest aquifer. This educational tool depicts how the groundwater levels in the Potomac Aquifer have changed since 1989 using measurements taken by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The interactive groundwater levels viewer can be accessed by clicking the image to the left.