Arizona ยท county water record

Water in Gila County

What the state and federal record says about water here, before you look at any particular piece of ground. Every finding names the agency it came from.

  • 10,687 Wells on record across 4,925 square miles
  • 200 ft Well depth middle value across 597 of 4,925 square miles
  • 102 ft Depth to water middle value across 24 of 4,925 square miles

Point at any square mile to read what is on it. Hover the maps below to compare them.

Gila County by the square mile

Every finding on this page is one number for the whole county. These are the same records placed on the ground they came from.

Wells on record. Every well ADWR has a record of, exempt and non-exempt together.

  • none on record (bare ground)
  • up to 1
  • 2
  • 3 to 4
  • 5 to 10
  • 11 to 40
  • over 40

4,925 surveyed sections, drawn 2 by 2 miles to a square. The shading is scaled against every county in Arizona, so a colour means the same thing on any of these pages. The outline is the county boundary from the Census Bureau: ground inside the line and outside the shading is ground nobody has drilled, filed on or addressed. Aerial imagery is the USGS National Map.

  1. Stands out

    Water rights here are still being decided in court

    100% of the county falls inside a general stream adjudication that has run for decades and is not finished. Until it ends, who holds what is formally unsettled.

    Arizona general stream adjudications 1 of 14 counties

    100% here 1st of 14
    state 93% 14%100%

    One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.

  2. Stands out

    Water sampled here comes back over a federal limit more often than it should

    12.5% of groundwater samples in this county exceeded a federal drinking water standard, against 4% across the state, across 9,712 samples. In Arizona the usual culprit is arsenic, which is natural, invisible, and a treatment cost rather than a reason not to buy.

    Water Quality Portal (USGS and EPA) 1 of 15 counties

    12.5% here 1st of 15
    state 3.7% 1.5%12%

    One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.

  3. Worth knowing

    FEMA has never determined the flood risk for most of this county

    100% of the county is FEMA Zone D, which means undetermined hazard, against 56% across the state. Nobody has looked. That is a different thing from being studied and coming back outside the floodplain, and a lender or an insurer will treat the two differently.

    FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer 2 of 15 counties

    100% here 2nd of 15
    state 56% 18%100%

    One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.

  4. Worth knowing

    A lot of this county is within five miles of a federal cleanup site

    10% of the county lies within five miles of a Superfund site. Five miles is proximity rather than contamination, and it is the distance at which a groundwater plume stops being somebody else's problem.

    EPA Superfund national priorities list 4 of 13 counties

    10% here 4th of 13
    state 4.7% 0.4%33%

    One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.

  5. Context

    Much of this county is tribal land

    39% of the county is tribal land, where water rights are federally reserved and settled separately from the state system.

    Arizona general stream adjudications 5 of 13 counties

    39% here 5th of 13
    state 23% 0.3%69%

    One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.

  6. Worth knowing

    The water table here has risen over twenty years

    The median monitored well is 3.8 feet higher than it was twenty years ago, across 50 wells. That is unusual in Arizona and it is usually the result of a surface water supply arriving and pumping easing off rather than of rain.

    ADWR groundwater level change

    3.8 ft here

    The bar is the whole county and the fill is this county's share.

This is the county. Your question is probably a property.

None of the above is about a particular parcel. Water is not parcel-shaped: the ditch serving the ground runs through other people's land and the senior right that curtails it sits somewhere else, which is why the state files by survey section rather than by property. Check an address and you get the square mile it sits in, with the wells, the rights and what was actually diverted.

Check a property in Gila County