ABSTRACT
The word aquifer comes from two Latin words: aqua (water) and affero (to bring, to give). It
was introduced in the United States by Norton in 1897, in reference to term aquife`re, which
was first used by French physicist and astronomer Arago in 1835 (Arago translated his paper
to English the same year, Arago, 1835a,b). Aquifer is a geologic formation, or a group of
hydraulically connected geologic formations, storing and transmitting significant quantities
of potable groundwater. Although most dictionaries of geologic and hydrogeologic terms
would have a very similar definition, it is surprising how many interpretations of the word
exist in every day’s practice, depending on the circumstances. The problem usually arises from
the lack of common understanding of the following two terms that are not easily quantifiable:
significant and potable. For example, a well yielding 2 gpm may be very significant for an
individual household without any other available sources of water supply. However, if this
quantity is at the limit of what the geologic formation could provide through individual wells,
such ‘‘aquifer’’ would certainly not be considered as a potential source for any significant
public water supply. Another issue is the question of groundwater quality. If the groundwater
has naturally high total dissolved solids (TDS), say 5000 mg=L, it would disqualify it from being considered as a significant source of water supply, regardless of the groundwater
quantity. On the other hand, water treatment technologies such as reverse osmosis (RO)
make aquifers with slightly brackish groundwater potentially interesting for development.
These are just some of the examples of difficulties that various shareholders face in the fields
of water supply and contaminant hydrogeology. In any case, before attempting to solve a
problem, all interested parties, including regulators, should have a common understanding of
the two most important hydrogeologic terms that seem to be used somewhat arbitrarily and
interchangeably: groundwater and aquifer. In other words, there should be at least some
agreement of what the goal of the future effort is. For example, are we protecting (developing)
the aquifer, or groundwater in general? Is it reasonable to assume that someone may use this
particular groundwater for water supply? It is also important to set clear criteria how should
the progress and the ultimate success of the effort be measured. For example, is the ground-
water less contaminated then before (but maybe still contaminated), or how long would it
take to restore the aquifer to its beneficial use?
