The National Water Quality Assessment Program
During the period 1972-86 an estimated $541 billion was expended for
water-pollution abatement in the United States (ITFM, 1992), and it was
appropriate that the U.S. Congress ask if the Nation's water-quality was
improving as a result of the expenditures. For a number of reasons, this
important question could not be answered satisfactorily using existing
water-quality information. Therefore, the U.S. Congress appropriated funds in
1986 for the USGS to design and implement a program to address questions
related to status and long-term trends in surface- and ground-water quality at
national, regional, and local scales. The USGS began a pilot program in seven
project areas to develop and refine a plan for the National Water-Quality
Assessment (NAWQA) Program (Hirsch and others, 1988). In 1991, the USGS began
full implementation of the program (Leahy and others, 1990). The NAWQA program
builds upon an existing base of water-quality studies of the USGS, as well as
those of other Federal, State, and local agencies. The objectives of the NAWQA
program are to:
- Describe current water-quality conditions for a large part of the Nation's
freshwater streams, rivers, and aquifers.
- Describe how water quality is changing over time.
- Improve understanding of the primary natural and human factors that affect
water-quality conditions.
This information will help support the development and evaluation of
management, regulatory, and monitoring decisions by other Federal, State, and
local agencies to protect, use, and enhance water resources.
The goals of the NAWQA Program are being achieved through ongoing and proposed
investigations of 60 of the Nation's most important river basins and aquifer
systems, which are referred to as study units. A
national map of these
study units shows that they are distributed throughout the Nation and
cover a diversity of hydrogeologic settings. More than two-thirds of
the Nation's freshwater use occurs within the 59 study units and more than
two-thirds of the people served by public water-supply systems live within
their boundaries. The 60 study units have been divided into groups of
study units each, and their intensive data-collection phases have been
staggered to allow efficient and effective use of resources. The first 20
studies began in 1991, the second group began in 1994, and the third group
will begin study in 1997. The first group of 20 study units is planned to begin a
second cycle of study in the year 2000 and the cycle is intended to continue
into the future so as to provide both short-term information necessary for
today's water-resource management decisions, and the long-term information
needed for policy decisions.
References
National USGS-NAWQA home page
ACF NAWQA home page
The URL for this page is http://ga.water.usgs.gov
/nawqa/main.nawqa.html
If you have questions or comments about this document contact wbhughes@usgs.gov
Last Modified: Thursday, 17-Jul-2008 11:12:18 EDT