Orleans Parish, LA Water Table Trend
Is the water table dropping in Orleans Parish, LA?
Orleans Parish's representative monitoring well shows depth to water rising, getting shallower over time, a fitted trend of 10 ft per decade over 84 years of readings.
One well stands in for Orleans Parish's whole aquifer here, the honest simplification every page on this site carries.
What the well actually measured
The most recent reading put water 18.6 ft below land surface. Readings span 1942-05-25 to 2026-08-04, 3200 measurements from USGS well USGS-295652090020101 (Or-42), part of the National Water Information System. The qualifying bar and the OLS fit behind this trend are documented in the methodology guide.
Where Orleans Parish ranks
Of the 1,449 US counties with a usable trend, Orleans Parish ranks 27th from fastest-rising to fastest-declining, 1 is the fastest-rising water table measured, 1449 the fastest-declining. About 362,701 people live in Orleans Parish, Louisiana. See the fastest-moving counties guide for how Orleans Parish stacks up against the most extreme cases nationally.
A dropping table says nothing about water quality
Whether Orleans Parish's water table is rising or falling is independent of what's actually in the water. Depletion can concentrate naturally-occurring minerals, so it's worth checking directly with a water test rather than assuming a depth trend says anything about quality.