The US Counties Where the Water Table Is Moving Fastest
Fastest decline, of 494 declining counties tracked
Ranked by the fitted trend at each county's representative well, fastest first: Jones County, IA (106 ft/decade, well in place 29 years), McDonald County, MO (67.7 ft/decade, well in place 96 years), Stevens County, KS (39.5 ft/decade, well in place 18 years), Jefferson County, AR (33.2 ft/decade, well in place 75 years), Comal County, TX (32.7 ft/decade, well in place 28 years), Stone County, MO (31 ft/decade, well in place 54 years), Tulare County, CA (30.6 ft/decade, well in place 38 years), Barton County, MO (29.6 ft/decade, well in place 89 years). These sit well above this dataset's own "severe" cutoff of 4.1 ft/decade, see the methodology guide for how that cutoff was set.
Fastest rise, of 353 rising counties tracked
Not every county is declining: DeKalb County, IL (47.9 ft/decade, well in place 34 years), Carroll County, AR (44.6 ft/decade, well in place 59 years), Marshall County, IL (32.1 ft/decade, well in place 32 years), Jefferson County, MO (28 ft/decade, well in place 25 years), Grundy County, IL (27.2 ft/decade, well in place 27 years) all show a water table getting shallower over their well's full record. A rising table is not automatically good news, it can also mean flooding or waterlogging risk, which this site does not model. The counties at the other end of this list are exactly who the well-pump risk guide is written for.
Why this list changes if you check back
Every figure here is read live from the same per-well trend each county page shows, not typed in once. If a well gets a new reading that shifts its slope, or WaterTableCheck adds more qualifying wells, this list updates with it rather than going stale.