Madison County, MO Water Table Trend
Is the water table dropping in Madison County, MO?
Madison County's representative monitoring well shows depth to water declining at a typical pace for a declining county, a fitted trend of 2.6 ft per decade over 87 years of readings.
This is one representative well, not a county-wide survey, the same grain limit every page here discloses.
Madison County's source well, in detail
Depth to water at the last reading was 104.8 ft below land surface. Readings span 1939-04-01 to 2026-06-09, 32 measurements from USGS well MO005-373210090180601 (Fredericktown), part of the National Water Information System. The qualifying bar and the OLS fit behind this trend are documented in the methodology guide.
How Madison County compares nationally
Madison County sits at rank 1230th of 1,449 ranked counties, ordered rising-to-declining, so a low number means a rising water table and a high one means fast decline. Madison County, Missouri is home to about 12,852 people. See the fastest-moving counties guide for how Madison County stacks up against the most extreme cases nationally.
If you own a well in Madison County
A dropping water table means a residential pump has to reach deeper and work harder, which shortens its life. In Madison County, that trend is real, not assumed: 2.6 ft per decade over 87 years.
Depth and quality are separate questions
This page answers a depth question, not a quality one. A well in Madison County can be stable in depth and still worth testing for quality, or declining and still test clean, the two are measured separately, and only a direct test settles the second one.