Estimated Use of Water in the United States
County-Level Data for 2000

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 Circular 1268, Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2000. The 2000 water-use data differ from the 1995 data in comprehensiveness of data collection, level of aggregation and release outlet, and category characteristics. Data files for 1985 and 1990 and for 1995 are also available for download.

Comprehensiveness of data collection

• All States collected data for public supply, domestic, irrigation, industrial, and thermoelectric power water use. These categories represented 97 percent of water use during 1995.
• Although all States collected data for domestic water use and for public supply population served, some States did not report this data at the county level. Those States will have totals in Circular 1268, but will show blanks for domestic self-supplied population, domestic fresh ground-water withdrawals, domestic fresh surface-water withdrawals, domestic total fresh withdrawals, and/or public-supply total population served in the county-level data files. If county-level estimates for domestic water use are not available, the total water use data elements also will be blank in the data files. If totals were calculated without the domestic water-use estimates, they would not agree with the totals for those States in Circular 1268.
• Selected States collected data for 2000 in the categories of livestock, aquaculture, and mining. These States include those with the largest uses of water in these categories in 1995. The data files show blanks for States that did not compile data for these categories.
• No consumptive-use data were collected for any of the categories for 2000.
• No public-supply delivery data were collected for 2000.

Levels of data aggregation and release outlet

• State-level data for the categories listed were published for 2000 in USGS Circular 1268.
• County-level data for the categories listed above are in the data files linked from this page.
• No water-use estimates were compiled by water-resources cataloging unit or by water-resources region for 2000.

Category Changes

• For 2000, the new category of aquaculture combines the fish-farming activities of the 1995 animal specialties category and the fish-hatchery activities of the 1995 commercial category.
• No commercial water-use data were collected for 2000.
• No wastewater release data were collected for 2000.
• No hydroelectric power instream use data were collected for 2000.
• Thermoelectric power withdrawals are categorized by cooling type (once-through or closed-loop cooling) rather than by fuel type (fossil fuel, nuclear, geothermal).

Data Files

Individual State data files are provided in Microsoft Excel format. (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. A separate data dictionary also is available. An index of county FIPS codes is available from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Individual State data files can be provided in tab-delimited ASCII format upon request to wu-web@usgs.gov .