USGS NAWQA Program Holds Local Meeting to Share Updates

Earlier today, the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program held a Liaison Committee Meeting in Washington, DC.  Meeting participants included representatives from USGS, USDA, EPA’s Pesticides Program, associations (including ASDWA), agricultural organizations, and academia.  During the meeting USGS representatives shared updates about NAWQA’s program efforts to:

• Restore monitoring locations and measure additional constituents such as pesticides in surface water and pharmaceuticals and emerging contaminants in groundwater.

• Develop a new “National Fixed Site Network” web site displaying basic maps and graphs of annual reporting data on streamflow, nitrogen, phosphorus, nitrate in coastal rivers, and nutrient loads in the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin. The web site is expected to be launched by the end of the year.

• Improve understanding of stream water quality data through the SPARROW tool to: tabulate nutrient loading at specific mapping points; track nutrient sources and loads from point sources, fertilizers, manure, air deposition, and urban sources in the nation’s estuaries and the Great Lakes; and measure total organic carbon, sediment, and salinity in national and regional models.

For more information about the NAWQA Program, visit the web site HERE.