Excerpt from Design of a Statewide Ground-Water Monitoring Network for Illinois

A statewide ground-water monitoring network has been designed to provide reliable information for use by water resource managers, environmental researchers, and the public. The general goals of this large scale surveil lance network are to provide an overview of ground-water conditions in the major aquifers of Illinois and to document significant changes in these conditions over time. Operation of the monitoring network will help to detect existing and emerging ground-water quality and quantity problems and to develop plans for mitigating damage to the state's most important aquifers.

A review of programs in other states revealed that Illinois is near the middle of the pack with regard to progress toward implementation of a statewide ground-water monitoring plan. It was noted in this review that, despite the significant geographic differences among states, many of the problems are the same. Generally, the available historical data are not sufficiently reliable and complete to satisfy current and future ground-water information needs. Inadequate funding of data collection and information management activities, and a lack of recognition of the importance of these efforts to water resource management, are usually limiting factors. Given the same level of funding, smaller states are able to more easily monitor important ground-water areas within their borders to a greater degree of detail. In larger states, a realistic set of priorities and a willingness to compromise are required for monitoring programs to be economically reason able.

The network design presented in this report is based upon the sampling of existing public water supply (pws) wells and incorporates a prioritization scheme to determine the degree to which aquifers should be monitored. This approach maximizes the ability of the proposed monitoring network to document changes in ground-water conditions and minimizes the fiscal requirements. The use of existing wells is not only less costly than installing wells specific ally designed for monitoring, but also facilitates the detection of long-term ground-water degradation by yielding data which can be compared with historic records of ground-water quality analyses compiled over decades.

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