Geology And Extent Of The Confined Aquifers Of Kent County, Delaware
Date
2006
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Publisher
Newark, DE: Delaware Geological Survey, University of Delaware
Abstract
Ground water comprises nearly all of the water supply in Kent County, Delaware. The confined aquifers of the area are an important part of this resource base. The aim of this study is to provide an up-to-date geologic framework for the confined aquifers of Kent County, with a focus on their stratigraphy and correlation.
Seven confined aquifers are used for water supply in Kent County. All occur at progressively greater depths south-southeastward, paralleling the overall dip of the sedimentary section that underlies the state. The two geologically oldest, the Mount Laurel and Rancocas aquifers, are normally reached by drilling only in the northern part of the county. The Mount Laurel aquifer is an Upper Cretaceous marine shelf deposit composed of clean quartz sands that are commonly glauconitic. It occurs at around 300 ft below sea level in the Smyrna Clayton area and is typically just less than 100 ft thick. Southward, toward Dover, it passes into fine-grained facies that do not yield significant ground water. The Rancocas aquifer is a Paleocene to Eocene marine unit of shelf deposits consisting of glauconite-rich sands with shells and hard layers. It occurs as high as 100 ft below sea level in northwestern Kent County and deepens southeastward, rapidly changing facies to finer-grained, nonaquifer lithologies in the same direction.
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Keywords
Geology, Confined Aquifers, Kent County, Delaware, Delaware