This is the fifty-second in a series of annual reports that describe groundwater conditions in Utah. Reports in this series, published cooperatively by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Rights, and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Quality, provide data to enable interested parties to maintain awareness of changing groundwater conditions.

This report, like the others in the series, contains information on well construction, groundwater withdrawals from wells, water-level changes, precipitation, streamflow, and chemical quality of water. Information on well construction included in this report refers only to new wells constructed for withdrawal of groundwater. Supplementary data are included in reports of this series only for those years or areas that are important to a discussion of changing groundwater conditions and for which applicable data are available.

This report includes individual discussions of selected significant areas of groundwater development in the State for calendar year 2014. Most of the reported data were collected by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Rights, and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Quality. This report is also available online at http://www.waterrights.utah.gov/techinfo/ and http://ut.water.usgs.gov/publications/GW2015.pdf. Groundwater conditions in Utah for calendar year 2013 are reported in Burden and others (2014) and are available online at http://ut.water.usgs.gov/publications/GW2014.pdf.

The water-level change maps in this report show the difference between water levels measured in the same well at two distinct times: in the spring of 1985 and the spring of 2015. Throughout the state, many groundwater levels were near their peak in or around 1985 following a multiple-year period of above average precipitation in the early 1980s. Conversely, consecutive years of significant drought have contributed to low groundwater levels in 2015. For these reasons, the difference between 1985 and 2015 groundwater levels may not accurately portray long-term changes in an aquifer. An evaluation of water-level trends should also include consideration of the annual water-level measurement plots provided for each of the major areas of groundwater development in this report.