Groundwater Capacity Use Areas - Lowcountry

Capacity Use Program: Lowcountry

On July 24, 1981, the South Carolina Water Resources Commission established and declared the whole of Jasper County, Beaufort County, and Colleton County as the Lowcountry Capacity Use Area (Lowcountry Area). Hampton County was added on June 10, 2008. The Lowcountry Area was the second of the four currently declared Capacity Use Areas in South Carolina.

Lowcountry Capacity Use Groundwater Evaluation 2021

Groundwater Management Planning

Illustrative diagram of the water cycle

South Carolina's Groundwater Resources

Where does groundwater come from?  Did you know that groundwater was once a raindrop or snow flake falling from the atmosphere to the Earth?  Water continually cycles from the sky to the earth, some taken up by plants, some returned to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration.

Dry Cleaners - A Source of Pollution

Many dry cleaning sites have environmental contamination because of minor leaks and spills of dry cleaning solvents or process wastes. Some leaks occur from containers of solvent or waste stored outside of the dry cleaning plants; however, many problems result from small drips of solvent on the floors inside the dry cleaning operation. Many of these solvent releases occur on a daily basis during normal dry cleaning operations.