PERMIAN FORMATION INFLUENCE ON THE OGALLALA AQUIFER, EASTERN TEXAS PANHANDLE

The Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District (PGCD) and the Hemphill County Underground Water Conservation District (HCUWCD) are located in all or part of 9 counties in the eastern Texas Panhandle. The primary aquifer in the District is the Ogallala Aquifer, part of the High Plains Aquifer system. In this area, the sediments containing the current Ogallala Aquifer were deposited on the erosional surfaces of Triassic and Permian formations. The Triassic formations are limited to the western part of the PGCD area; the Permian formations form the base of the Ogallala in the majority of the two districts. This is distinctly different from those areas to the south, which have been studied in greater detail (Reeves, 1996). The availability of commercial quantities of groundwater in the districts is controlled by the topography of top of the Permian formations. There is significant variation in the erosional surface. These variations appear to be controlled by several different mechanisms. These include salt dissolution (Gustavson, et al, 1980), faulting, and stream channel erosion. Agricultural irrigators and municipal suppliers have located their activities over these areas where the elevation of the Permian surface is the lowest, and therefore the saturated thickness is greatest.

Construction of a new municipal supply well field in one area has led to speculative trading, buying and selling of water rights. This area of interest has some of the most significant variation in the Permian surface. There has been limited investigation of the area; most information has been taken from logs of wells drilled to supply water for petroleum drilling. When the various lawsuits, challenges and legal maneuvers over the water rights are settled, there may be some serious investigation of the area in order to better quantify the volume of available water. Such investigations could help us better understand the nature of the top of the Permian formations.