USGS: Elbert County Denver Basin water levels largely declining; report due this year

ELBERT COUNTY, Colo. — Elbert County commissioners met with scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Colorado Water Science Center on April 2 to review a decade of groundwater monitoring in the Denver Basin beneath the county and to discuss next steps for local water planning.

USGS staff summarized the county-scale monitoring effort, which analyzed water-level trends from 2015 through 2023 in the Denver Basin bedrock aquifers — the Upper Dawson, Lower Dawson, Denver, Arapahoe and Laramie-Fox Hills. Kelly (USGS scientist) said the network now includes about 31 wells (down from roughly 40 when monitoring began) and uses a mix of discrete measurements and two-hourly or hourly pressure-transducer sites to create continuous records.

The USGS presentation showed that most monitored wells and aquifers had declining water-level trends over the 2015–2023 period, with the largest magnitude decreases concentrated along Highway 86 and near the border with Douglas County. The USGS compared the current study period to an earlier USGS SIR (scientific-investigation report) that covered roughly 2015–2018 and said the longer record now (about 10 years) produces more statistically robust trend estimates.

Why it matters: County officials said the findings are important for land-use and development decisions.…