U.S. Department of the Interior
US Geological Survey
WRI 83-4249

The surficial aquifer is the primary source of fresh water for the heavily developed coastal area in eastern Palm Beach County. Well fields are generally located in a discontinuous zone of high secondary permeability in the surficial aquifer that extends from the Juno Beach area south to Broward County and varies in width from about 4 to 15 miles. This zone is the northernmost extension of the Biscayne aquifer. The zone, formed by varying dissolution of aquifer limestone materials during Pleistocene changes in sea level, ranges in depth from about sea level to 220 feet below sea level. Because of proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and saltwater estuaries on the east and diluted residual seawater to the west, the aquifer is susceptible to saltwater intrusion.

The ground water is predominantly a calcium bicarbonate type. Dissolved solids, calcium carbonate hardness, and chloride are greatest along the saltwater - intruded coastline and in the western part of the study area where diluted residual seawater exists. Total organic carbon increases inland because of infiltration of rainwater through thicker layers of organic soils.

Ground-water levels in the surficial aquifer in eastern Palm Beach County are strongly influenced by controlled levels in canals of the South Florida Water Management and the Lake Worth Drainage Districts. In March 1981 after 12 months of below-average rainfall, ground-water levels ranged from about 2 feet above sea level along the coast to nearly 21 feet above sea level, 15 miles inland in the northwest section of the study area.

Information about on-line reading and printing of historic documents

These reports and documents have been scanned from the original hard-copy materials and are made available on the internet in both HTML and PDF formats. Because these are scanned documents, we are unable to provide fully-accessible versions of these reports. If you cannot fully access the information in these documents, please contact Heather S. Henkel at hhenkel@usgs.gov.

The HTML versions of these documents have been created to provide the information in a format that is quickly and easily readable over the Internet. Selective pages and images can be printed from this HTML version by placing the cursor inside the right-hand frame and selecting the print option from the browser. The PDF version of the reports are also provided, and are the recommended format to use for the best printer format and resolution.

Please note - some PDF files are very large (over 2 MB) and may take some time to download, depending on your system.

View the HTML version of the report (downloads faster for on-line reading)

View the PDF version of this report (3.21MB) (best for printing)