US Water Quality
National Water Quality
Inventory: 2000 Report to Congress.
Biennial report prepared under Section 305(b) of the Clean Water
Act summarizes state-reported water quality conditions in streams,
lakes, estuaries, wetlands, coastal waters, and ground water.
Read Chapter 1 (4 pgs, how data is collected) and parts of the
other chapters as needed to answer the questions. In the other
chapters a lot of the info will be in graphical form, thus you
won't need to read a lot. We are covering Rivers, Lakes, and GW.
The summary graphs are from the Fact Sheet.
Why re these called 305b reports? To what does that refer?
How much does it cover, i.e., what is assessed?
Where does the data come from and who collects the data?
What national monitoring efforts exist? Where does the data reside?
http://www.epa.gov/owow/monitoring/
Volunteer efforts are becoming increasingly important. What are
some of these programs?
Texas Watch,
GLOBE, RIVERS
Water Quality Standards and Designated Uses
The Clean Water Act establishes a framework for achieving its
national objective “...to restore and maintain the chemical,
physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters.”
Congress decreed that, where attainable, water quality “...provides
for the protection and propagation of fish, shellfish, and wildlife
and provides for recreation in and on the water.” These goals
are referred to as the “fishable and swimmable” goals
of the Act.
State designated uses are the beneficial uses that water quality should support.
State water quality criteria come in two forms, numeric and
narrative. Numeric criteria establish thresholds for the physical
conditions, chemical concentrations, and biological attributes
required to support a beneficial use. Narrative criteria describe,
rather than quantify, conditions that must be maintained to support
a designated use. For example, a narrative criterion might be
“Waters must be free of substances that are toxic to humans,
aquatic life, and wildlife.”
Water Use Designations
How are waters assessed, i.e., what are they used for?
Note pictures
What is use support?
Where can you find a designation for a local stream?
Go to the TCEQ site and look at the 303d
lists for 2000 (40 pgs). What local streams and lakes are
on it and what for?
What is a Unified Water Assessment?
Unified Watershed Assessments
·Characterizing waters for the 305(b) assessment
·Using the subset of waters identified as not supporting
WQS to develop 303(d) lists
·Identifying source contributions
·Developing TMDLs
·Implementing source controls
·Performing followup monitoring to evaluate the effectiveness
of source controls and to track trends in water quality improvements.
There is a new approach being implemented for assessing water quality. It is called the Index of Watershed Indicators (IWI). What is this all about? They have a set of US maps for each indicator.
Index of Watershed Indicators
The EPA Office of Water and its many public and private partners
developed the Index of Watershed Indicators (IWI) to present the
health of the nation’s aquatic resources.
The goals of IWI are to:
Depict the current condition of the watershed and indicate its
vulnerability to future degradation
Educate and empower citizens through easy access to both summary
information and the underlying details
Provide a set of tools for water resource managers at all watershed
scales
Help measure progress toward watershed goals
Overall Watershed Characterization
The Index of Watershed Indicators characterizes the condition
and vulnerability of aquatic systems in each of the 2,262 watersheds
in the 50 states and Puerto Rico. This involves an assessment
of condition, vulnerability, and data sufficiency.
First, indicators of the condition of the watershed are scored
and assigned to one of three categories: better water quality,
water quality with less serious problems, and water quality with
more serious problems.
Second, indicators of vulnerability are scored to create two characterizations
of vulnerability: high and low. These two sets of indicators are
then combined.
1. Assessed Rivers, Lakes, and Estuaries Meeting All Designated
Uses
2. Fish Consumption Advisories
3. Indicators of Source Water Condition
4. Contaminated Sediments
5. Ambient Water Quality (Toxics)
6. Ambient Water Quality (Conventional)
7. Wetland Loss Index
8. Aquatic/Wetland Species at Risk
9. Toxic Loads Over Permit Limits
10. Conventional Loads Over Permit Limits
11. Urban Runoff Potential
12. Agricultural Runoff Potential
13. Population Change
14. Hydrologic Modification from Dams
15. Estuarine Pollution Susceptibility Index
Let's look at the National data for the following classifications.
What are the pollutants in each which are the most troublesome?
Why?
Rivers and Streams
Lakes
Estuaries, Coastal Waters
Ground Water
Now look ate the Texas data? How does it compare to the national?
What are the effects of some of these pollutants?