Source of Your Water

The District’s sole source of water is from underground aquifers, water-bearing strata of permeable rock, sand, or gravel. No surface water, desalinated water, or recycled water is used. The District has a total of 30 active wells which together provide a maximum production capacity of approximately 30 million gallons per day (mgd), with a total water-right capacity to pump up to over 60+ mgd.

The District’s 30 active wells are in four aquifers—A , C, E, and G—with A being the shallowest and G being the deepest.  Aquifers are generally of glacial origin and tend to be coarsegrained and highly permeable. There are three Aquitards, B, D, and F, layered between the four aquifers. Aquitards are strata of finer-grained and less permeable layers and usually of interglacial origin. The District’s aquitards are made up of sediments deposited by the ancestral Nisqually and Puyallup rivers. Historical sedimentation is not unlike the alluvium presently being deposited by these rivers today. 

Recharge (replenishing) of the aquifers comes from local rainfall in the Clover/Chambers drainage basin.  The District’s deepest aquifers, E and G, will most likely receive some additional, deep underflow recharge from the south Puyallup/Graham area westward to Puget Sound, including snowpack from Mt. Rainier.