2005 WATER USE

 Water-use home

• Summaries
  • State totals
  • Groundwater
  • Surface water
  • Category of use
  • Historical trends
  • Consumptive use

• Water use by category
  • Public supply
  • Domestic
  • Commercial
  • Irrigation
  • Livestock
  • Aquaculture
  • Industrial
  • Thermoelectric power
  • Mining

• Data tables
  • County data:
    • Totals
    • Totals, by category
    • Surface water
    • Groundwater

• Data by individual area

• Select from a map:
  • Counties

• Select from a form:
  Select a county Appling Atkinson Bacon Baker Baldwin Banks Barrow Bartow Ben Hill Berrien Bibb Bleckley Brantley Brooks Bryan Bulloch Burke Butts Calhoun Camden Candler Carroll Catoosa Charlton Chatham Chattahoochee Chattooga Cherokee Clarke Clay Clayton Clinch Cobb Coffee Colquitt Columbia Cook Coweta Crawford Crisp Dade Dawson Decatur DeKalb Dodge Dooly Dougherty Douglas Early Echols Effingham Elbert Emanuel Evans Fannin Fayette Floyd Forsyth Franklin Fulton Gilmer Glascock Glynn Gordon Grady Greene Gwinnett Habersham Hall Hancock Haralson Harris Hart Heard Henry Houston Irwin Jackson Jasper Jeff Davis Jefferson Jenkins Johnson Jones Lamar Lanier Laurens Lee Liberty Lincoln Long Lowndes Lumpkin McDuffie McIntosh Macon Madison Marion Meriwether Miller Mitchell Monroe Montgomery Morgan Murray Muscogee Newton Oconee Oglethorpe Paulding Peach Pickens Pierce Pike Polk Pulaski Putnam Quitman Rabun Randolph Richmond Rockdale Schley Screven Seminole Spalding Stephens Stewart Sumter Talbot Taliaferro Tattnall Taylor Telfair Terrell Thomas Tift Toombs Towns Treutlen Troup Turner Twiggs Union Upson Walker Walton Ware Warren Washington Wayne Webster Wheeler White Whitfield Wilcox Wilkes Wilkinson Worth

• Download data
  • Georgia water use, 2005 (Excel)

• Publications
  • Water Use in Georgia by County for 2005; and Water-Use Trends, 1980–2005

USGS IN YOUR STATE

USGS Water Science Centers are located in each state.

Irrigation Water Use in Georgia, 2005

Irrigation water use is water used for crops, large nurseries, athletic fields, and golf courses. Estimates of irrigation water use are based on a 2004 irrigation survey conducted by the University of Georgia, Cooperative Extension Service (Kerry Harrison, Cooperative Extension Service, written commun., 2004). County extension agents were asked to provide data on crop acreage, water application rates by crop for each county, and percentages of ground- and surface-water use. Withdrawal data for permitted users were provided by GaEPD. Withdrawals for golf irrigation were estimated using water application rates provided by the University of Georgia (Gil Landy and Clint Waltz, University of Georgia, written commun., 1999). In this report, the 2004 irrigation data were used because 2005 data were not available.

Estimated total irrigation water use in 2004 was about 752 Mgal/d (65 percent from ground water and 35 percent from surface water; table 2), a decrease of about 338 Mgal/d from the 2000 estimate. This 30-percent decrease results from decreased irrigation as compared to irrigation during the drought in 2000. Most irrigation occurs in the Coastal Plain physiographic province, with the largest withdrawal in the southwestern part of the State. Irrigation withdrawal accounts for more than 95 percent of total water use in some counties in southwestern Georgia. Irrigation is the largest category of ground-water use in Georgia, accounting for 41 percent of all groundwater withdrawn.