Portage County, WI Water Table Trend
Portage County's groundwater trend, from USGS's own readings
Portage County's representative monitoring well shows depth to water holding roughly steady, a fitted trend of 0.1 ft per decade over 76 years of readings.
One well stands in for Portage County's whole aquifer here, the honest simplification every page on this site carries.
What the well actually measured
The most recent reading put water 6.2 ft below land surface. Readings span 1950-09-07 to 2026-10-21, 1757 measurements from USGS well USGS-441833089315601 (Pt-21/08e/10-0036), part of the National Water Information System. The qualifying bar and the OLS fit behind this trend are documented in the methodology guide.
Where Portage County ranks
Of the 1,449 US counties with a usable trend, Portage County ranks 698th from fastest-rising to fastest-declining, 1 is the fastest-rising water table measured, 1449 the fastest-declining. About 72,040 people live in Portage County, Wisconsin. See the fastest-moving counties guide for how Portage County stacks up against the most extreme cases nationally.
A dropping table says nothing about water quality
Whether Portage County'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.