Virginia Beach Drilling

Project Title Virginia Beach Shallow Ground-Water Study Number VA113 Location Virginia Beach Cooperating Agency City of Virginia Beach Department of Public Utilities  Project Chief Barry Smith Period of Project 1996 to present

Virginia Beach Shallow Ground-Water Study

Virginia Beach land use

Problem
Virginia Beach is a growing city in southeastern Virginia with a limited supply of fresh water. Most of the city’s drinking water, up to 45 million gallons per day, comes by pipeline from Lake Gaston, more than 100 miles to the west by way of Norfolk’s Western Reservoir System. Before 1998, Virginia Beach purchased up to 30 million gallons of water per day from the city of Norfolk.

The Lake Gaston pipeline supplies water for most of the northern half of the city, but some northern neighborhoods and the southern half of the city rely solely on ground water. Privately owned wells provide water from shallow depths in Virginia Beach. Supplies of ground water are limited, however, because of high concentrations of iron, manganese, chloride and (or) sulfide ions in some areas. At depths greater than approximately 200 ft, the water is generally too saline to drink

The city of Virginia Beach is striving to manage and protect the limited supply of usable ground water in the shallow aquifers beneath the city for drinking water, irrigation, heat pumps, and potentially for desalination. The U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the City of Virginia Beach began an investigation in 1996 to characterize the shallow aquifer system. The hydrogeologic framework of the shallow aquifer system needed to be refined, patterns of ground-water flow needed better definition, and the general quality of the shallow aquifers needed to be further defined.

The USGS has recovered continuous cores and down-hole geophysical logs from 7 test holes spread across the city to depths of approximately 200 feet. Ten observation wells were installed at 5 of those sites. Water from these and other wells will be analyzed and the hydrogeologic framework of the shallow aquifer system will be refined. Numerical modeling and particle tracking methods will be used to simulate ground-water flow and flow patterns beneath the southern watersheds of the city.  This information will provide a better understand the distribution of fresh ground water, its potential uses, and its susceptibility to contamination.