Preliminary water table map of surficial aquifer, Birmingham-Bessemer, Alabama from ADEM environmental assessment database

The Birmingham-Bessemer metropolitan area lies in the Birmingham-Big Canoe Valley physiographic district of the Alabama Valley and Ridge and is underlain mainly by a lower Paleozoic (Cambrian to Ordovician) sequence of folded and faulted carbonate and minor clastic sedimentary rocks. In the birmingham area, the valley is bounded to the southeast by Red Mountain, a NE-trending cuesta capped by SE-dipping middle Paleozoic shales and sandstones, and to the northwest by Sand Mountain, along the southeast side of which the lower Paleozoic carbonates are thrust-faulted northwestward over upper Paleozoic clastic rocks. The valley is drained by Village and Valley Creeks, which flow generally to the southwest. Previous studies of groundwater in the Birmingham area have dealt with flow within the carbonates and have described both water-table and confined aquifers. This study concentrates on the surficial aquifer, the clay-silt residual soil above carbonate rocks, in the Birmingham-Bessemer metropolitan area. A water table map covering approximately 50 square miles has been prepared from data contained in 66 individual contamination site reports submitted to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management by various geotechnical and environmental firms during the past 10 years. Water table data used in map preparation were collected during all seasons, andmore » at many sites collections were one-time events. All water table data from each site were averaged for this study. Data from several sites show water table fluctuations of as much as 4 feet from summer to winter.« less