Tracking Water Quality in the United States
Nicole Murgia
https://www.epa.gov/waterdata/waters-watershed-assessment-tracking-environmental-results-system
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides an in-depth look at water quality in the United States. Through a program referred to as the “Watershed Assessment, Tracking, and Environmental Results System” (WATERS), anyone can access details of water quality of watersheds across the country. The program was designed under the Clean Water Act to improve communications regarding water conditions among the government and citizens.
WATERS allows anyone to access information regarding the quality of the nation’s surface water through a variety of different data tools. The data program provides information such as the designated uses of bodies of water, water quality monitoring results, and assessments of water qualities.
One of the helpful programs that is included on the site is called “How’s My Waterway”. This tool allows the user to enter their current location and observe the water conditions of nearby bodies of waters. Once selected, one can view updated condition and pollution reports of the waterways near them. In addition to the technical report, the EPA provides an option to read the report in an edited, “Plain English” version that makes the scientific terms used understandable for the average citizen. https://watersgeo.epa.gov/mywaterway/mywaterway.html
Programs like WATERS allows everyone to stay informed on the quality of the waters around them as well as the hydrosphere as a whole.
Hey, Nicole! I like how you pointed out the usefulness of this website to Americans, regardless of their level of knowledge of geography or the hydrosphere. It made me wonder whether they also provide an option like Plain English but for other languages, such as Spanish. This would be an interesting option that would well serve many Americans given that a large and growing amount of us speak another language at home and are recorded as speaking English either not well or not at all.
Thanks for your post!
This website is great because it is an easy way to access data about the waterways near you. It’s important that we are aware of the water conditions and it is important that we have access to this information. This website is also cool because there is a vast collection of information and data so you can compare location all across the US. I was able to compare the waterways near my hometown and near the University of Richmond. The ‘plain english’ option was definitely helped me understand what I was looking at and make sense of the information.
I really like this website because it has a more thorough study on the water. There are maps that include data of water that is used for household and for industry. It is very surprised to see the variation on water quality and water use within U.S, and just leads to further question about how the urban geography can relate to the quality of the water.
This website made me realize that I have never really thought about the quality of the water I drink at home or anywhere else. Water quality is important, but also something we tend to take for granted in this country, where we tend to expect better quality than many other places around the world.The maps are very user-friendly and informative for an issue that is important to all of us. It is evident from this site that water qualities varies in our country more than we would like to believe and we should stay informed about what we are drinking on a daily basis.