Ground water pumped from the leaky-confined aquifer intervals is replenished by water held in storage within the aquitards. Aquitard storage of ground water is maintained by recharge and infiltration of ground water from the surficial aquifer intervals. Ground water underlying Kidder and northwest Stutsman Counties is suitable for irrigation of clay loam or coarser soils and all but salt sensitive crops. Maximum combined annual water use for irrigation from the Kidder aquifer system and the Marstonmoor Plain aquifer was 13,219 acre-feet during 1998. The average annual application of water for irrigation over the past 25 years has been about 10 inches per acre.
Water levels recover rapidly after each irrigation season.
The North Dakota State Water Commission monitors water levels at 270 observation wells and 8 surface-water staff gauge locations within Kidder and northwest Stutsman Counties. When installing or retrofitting an irrigation system, an important decision is selecting the proper pipe diameter for the installation. From an engineering point of view, the proper pipe size is based on a tolerable amount of friction loss for a given flow rate. This means the suction pipe on a centrifugal pump should have a larger diameter than the pipeline. Table 1 shows the maximum flow rate for various size pipelines when the water velocity is 5 feet per second.