March 7-13 was Groundwater Awareness Week! (Yes, there is a Groundwater Awareness Week.) To get into the spirit of things, I (Kate Guenther) decided to educate myself a bit about the relationship of Middle River to our groundwater aquifer system.

To start off, let’s review some basic earth science. An aquifer is an underground body of rocks with spaces between the rocks that fill with groundwater. Imagine an aquifer being like a rigid sponge. There are two terms that describe how an aquifer holds groundwater—porosity and permeability.

The rocks under our feet are full of cracks, fractures, and open spaces. For water to exist underground there must be empty spaces to hold it. The relative amount of space between rocks is called its porosity.

But the spaces between rocks can also be described... Read Full Blog