AQUIFER: Reason to be concerned

I’m responding to Mr. Peters’ letter in Sunday’s Cd’A Press claiming that there is plenty of water in this aquifer to meet future water demands.

The Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer Atlas, Fifth Edition (2023) gives a comprehensive and graphic review of the present condition of this aquifer. Thanks to hundreds of monitoring wells within the aquifer by six state and federal agencies (pg.16) the water inflow and water outflow has been quantified. There is a daily inflow of 985 million gallons and an outflow of 980 million gallons of water that has been monitored from 1995 to 2005. This 19-year-old data shows that water outflow (drawdown) from the aquifer was within 5 million gallons of reaching the total daily aquifer inflow. This same report shows all of the water source inflows to the aquifer, in millions of gallons per day (pg. 19).

This monitoring data clearly shows that we should be rightfully concerned about aquifer outflow demands that will likely exceed the inflow with future developments on the Rathdrum Prairie.

MARK WEADICK

Coeur d’Alene