WATER USE

 Water-use home

• Summaries
  • Total water use
  • Groundwater
  • Surface water
  • Historical trends

• Water use by category
  • Public supply
  • Domestic
  • Irrigation
  • Thermoelectric power
  • Industrial
  • Mining
  • Livestock
  • Aquaculture

• Data downloads

• Publications
  • National
  • State
  • Methods

Estimated Use of Water in the United States
County-Level Data for 2005

The current best estimates of county, State, and national water-use data may be downloaded from the National Water Information System Web (NWISWeb) interface, Water Data for the Nation, by selecting the Water Use button or data category pull-down. Data on NWISWeb may have been revised from previous publications such as Circular 1344.

These data files present water-use estimates by county for the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands which support the State-level water-use estimates published in USGS Circular 1344, Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2005. Publication data files for other 5-year reports are also available.

The summary of category changes and the water-use terminology page may also be helpful.

Comprehensiveness of data collection for 2005

• All States provided estimates for public supply, domestic, irrigation, livestock, aquaculture, industrial, mining, and thermoelectric power water use. All States also provided estimates of public supply deliveries for domestic use.
• All States will have estimates of the total population served by public supply. States optionally may have estimated public supply population served by groundwater and surface water.
• All States will have estimates of total irrigation. States optionally may have estimated subtotals for crop irrigation and golf-course irrigation.
• No consumptive-use data were collected nationally for any of the categories for 2005.
• No commercial water-use data were collected nationally for 2005.
• No wastewater release data were collected nationally for 2005.
• No hydroelectric power instream use data were collected nationally for 2005.
• Public-supply deliveries for commercial, industrial, and thermoelectric power were not collected nationally for 2005.

Levels of data aggregation and release outlet

• State-level data for the categories listed were published for 2005 in USGS Circular 1344 .
• County-level data for the categories listed above are in the data files linked from this page.
• Water-use estimates were compiled by water-resources cataloging unit (HUC8) for the Great Lakes for 2005.
• No water-use estimates were compiled nationally by aquifer for 2005.

Data Files

Individual State data files are provided in Microsoft Excel 2003 format (.xls). (The use of trade names is for identification purposes only and does not constitute endorsement by the U.S. Geological Survey.) Microsoft has a free viewer program for Microsoft Excel files for those who do not own a copy of Microsoft Excel. The file of all county-level data for the United States is provided in MS Excel format and as a tab-delimited ASCII file.

Data dictionary information is provided in Excel comment fields attached to each column heading and to cells containing FIPS codes. A separate data dictionary also is available.