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Appendix A
Interim Report
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nawqa program
102
Dr. Dallas C. Peek
Director, U.S. Geological Survey
The National Center
Reston, Virginia 22092
Dear Dr. Peek:
NAWQA Pilot Program
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCL
WATER SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BOARD
2101 Constirudon Avenue Washington, D.C. 20418
(202) 334-3422
September 25, 1989 fax (202) 33~520
We are pleased to transmit ten copies of an interim report by the Committee to
Review the USGS National Water Quality Assessment (hIAWQA) pilot program. As you
know, the committee was requested to review the technical aspects of the program, as
currently being developed by USGS, and to consider ways of improving it. The committee
was also requested to review the program's potential usefulness for establishing and
evaluating national policies and activities concerning water quality.
The committee is scheduled to provide a final report on its review of the NAWQA
pilot program by April 1990. This report is submitted to provide the USGS with a summary
of the committee's evaluations to date.
In general, on the basis of our review the committee is convinced that a
national-scale, long-term water quality assessment is in the best interest of the country.
Additionally, we believe that the USGS is well qualified to implement the proposed
NAWQA program because it is a nonregulatory agency and because of its ability to
undertake the long-term commitment necessary for such a program to be successful.
The USGS has an excellent reputation in performing its water quality data collection
programs at the national, state, and local levels. This attribute will be important when it
comes to cooperation with other federal, state, and local agencies. Thus, the committee
recommends that the NAWQA program continue to be developed by the USGS. Special
attention should be given to resolving the question of performing the necessary biological
monitoring, such as cooperating with the academic community and other appropriate
government agencies.
The committee sincerely appreciates the constructive working relationship that has
developed with the USGS in its review of the NAWQA pilot program. The committee
members look forward to continuing their work and issuing a final review document in
l 990.
Sincerely,
~.t~) ~
Richard S. Engelbreeht, Chairman
Committee to Review the USGS
National Water Quality Assessment
Pilot Program
cc: P. Cohen, Chief Hydrologist
The .Vat~o`; 9rs
Appendix A
103
September 25, 1989
REVIEW OF THE USGS
NATIONAL WATER QUALITY ASSESSMENT
PILOT PROGRAM INTERIM REPORT OF THE
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
In 1987 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) requested that the
National Research Council's (NRC) Water Science and Tech-
nology Board assemble a committee to review its National Water
Quality Assessment (NAWQA) pilot program. The committee
was appointed by the NRC in 1988 and has met four times. In
addition, various committee members have made site visits to
five of seven pilot study areas to discuss the program with local
officials and researchers as well as with USGS personnel directly
involved in the sampling and data collection program. The
committee is scheduled to provide a final report on its review of
the NAWQA program by April 1990. This interim report is
submitted by the committee to provide the USGS with a sum-
mary of its evaluation to date and mid-course advice. In this
interim report, the committee has focused on an overall review
of the general concept of a national water quality assessment
program--its usefulness to the nation, and whether or not it
should be carried out by an agency such as the USGS. Only in
this context has the committee had occasion to address the
question of implementation. Thus, a more detailed analysis of
the technical aspects of NAWQA, such as the frequency of the
sampling program, or the chemical constituents to be measured,
has yet to be performed by the committee.
The committee was asked to review the technical aspects of
NAWQA and to consider ways of improving the program, as
designed by the USGS. It was also requested to review the
program's potential usefulness for establishing and evaluating
national policies. Additionally, the committee has considered the
program's usefulness to state, interstate, local, and private en-
tities for making decisions affecting water resources and ad-
vancing the scientific understanding of water quality.
As stated in USGS Circular 1021, "Concepts for a National
Water-Quality Assessment Program," the goals of the NAWQA
program are as follows:
1. Provide a nationally consistent description of current
water quality conditions for a large part of the nation's water
resources;
104
NAWQA Pilot Program
2. Define long-term trends (or lack of trends) in water
quality; and
3. Identify, describe, and explain, as possible, the major
factors that affect observed water quality conditions and trends.
The information should be obtained on a continuing basis and
made available in a timely manner to water managers, policy-
makers, and the public. Such continual, timely information
should provide an improved scientific basis for evaluating the
effectiveness of water quality management programs and for
predicting the likely effects of contemplated changes in land use
and water management practices.
To address the potential usefulness of a full-scale NAWQA
program, the committee members (in small teams) visited five of
the seven pilot site study areas, including the Carson River
Basin, Upper Illinois River Basin, Yakima River Basin,
Kentucky River Basin, and Central Oklahoma Aquifer. Through
these site visits, the committee gained insight into the NAWQA
program from the state and local users of the data being
generated and collated by the USGS. All the visiting teams
agreed that the pilot projects were valuable studies for their
respective regions. The committee also reviewed sample reports
or products of the type that would be published as a result of
NAWQA.
Since other water quality monitoring efforts are ongoing or
planned within the state and federal governments, the committee
interviewed representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Forest
Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Maryland Depart-
ment of the Environment, the Association of State-Interstate
Water Pollution Control Agencies, the Soil Conservation Service,
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the
Interstate Conference on Water Policy to obtain their views
concerning the usefulness of the NAWQA program to national,
state, and local needs for water quality information. Represen-
tatives of the Department of Interior's Budget Office and the
Office of Management and Budget also participated in several
meetings.
On the basis of the information provided by the representa-
tives of these organizations, it was clear that the USGS enjoys an
excellent reputation among potential NAWQA users at all levels--
national, state, and local. Several state agencies even indicated
that any water quality data provided by the USGS would have
greater credibility than data collected by their own agencies.
Appendix A
105
The USGS obviously has a proven track record of providing
reliable and useful information through its water programs such
as the National Stream-Quality Accounting Network, the
Regional Aquifer-System Analysis program, and the Hydrologic
Benchmark program. There was a general consensus among
those associated with state and local agencies having respon-
sibility for water quality that the information to be provided by
NAWQA would be extremely valuable; in fact, in a few
instances it was reported that the information available through
the pilot studies had already proven useful.
In addition, it was pointed out, and the committee agrees,
that there are certain inherent advantages to having a non-
regulatory agency collect, analyze, and interpret NAWQA-type
data; e.g., it may be unrealistic to expect a regulatory agency
such as EPA to objectively evaluate the effectiveness of its own
water regulatory programs and expenditures. Most of the agency
representatives did not see any serious duplication between
NAWQA and other water quality data gathering efforts but
cautioned that care should be exercised to avoid any such situa-
tion. In this sense, the committee agrees with the agency repre-
sentatives that there should be as much cooperation and coordi-
nation among the different water quality monitoring programs
as possible and appropriate. One identified area of potential
cooperation among agencies was biomonitoring, i.e., the collection
of biological data.
Some of the agency representatives expressed doubt as to
whether NAWQA, as currently designed, will be able to elucidate
cause-effect relationships to the degree necessary to effectively
predict future water quality problems. However, there was a
general consensus that the USGS has the ability to undertake the
long-term commitment necessary for a NAWQA-type program to
be successful. The data and information generated by the
NAWQA program should be able to be made available to state
and local agencies and to private industry in a timely and
cost-effective way.
NEED FOR A LONG-TERM
WATER QUALITY ASSESSMENT
The committee believes there is a genuine need for a long-
term, large-scale national assessment of water quality in the
United States. Human health and environmental health are
inextricably linked to our nation's water quality. As our popu-
106
NAWQA Pilot Program
ration grows and our water resources become more intensively
developed, and indeed stressed, water quality becomes a more
important component of our political, economic, social, and
environmental decision-making. Such decision-making cannot
proceed without adequate information and understanding.
The committee frames the term "assessment of water quality"
in the following context. Sound decision-making requires that
problem areas be identified before they reach crisis proportions,
that they be evaluated carefully and fairly to improve or protect
water quality, and that information be gathered and under-
standing be developed from analysis and interpretation of data.
The committee defines "assessment" as being directed toward
these goals, rather than being directed toward assuring com-
pliance with a regulation or statute, or toward detecting the
presence of known contaminants. Therefore, an essential com-
ponent of an assessment should focus on cause-effect relation-
ships.
Long-term assessment is important for several reasons. First,
the physical, chemical, and biological processes that affect water
quality on and below the surface of the earth are extra-
ordinarily complex and are not completely understood. Thus,
any assessment of the state of water quality must evolve over
time, as our understanding and data bases increase. It is dif-
ficult to imagine a static, one-time assessment that would have
lasting value. Second, the processes affecting water quality take
place over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. For
example, ground water flow rates are very small, and a "snap-
shot," or even several snapshots closely spaced in time, would
provide relatively little information about change. Similarly, the
impacts of global climatic change on water quality are likely to
occur on time scales of decades. On the other hand, mixing
processes in mountain streams are very rapid, so that a single
sample, or even a few samples, could easily miss important
events. In either case, a long-term assessment would be more
likely to detect many important aspects of the status of water
quality in the United States.
~ .
Currently, there is no reliable national assessment of U.S.
water quality trends. Thus, a large-scale national assessment is
clearly warranted. Many important water quality decisions are
made at the national level, and federal taxes support many water
quality activities. In addition, because of the complexity and
spatial diversity of water quality issues, a national-level aggrega-
tion and integration would be invaluable in maximizing infor-
Appendix A
107
mation gained from local experience. Furthermore, there are, in
varying degrees, inconsistencies between data sets gathered for
local or regional purposes. Collecting consistent data and care-
fully aggregating available data would be of significant value
both in identifying and evaluating national issues and in trans-
ferring information and understanding from one region or
locality to another. Finally, while there is much completed and
ongoing research focusing on cause-effect water quality relation-
ships, this research tends to be directed toward small-scale (often
laboratory-scale) issues. We know little about the behavior of
large systems, such as entire river basins or aquifer systems.
Therefore, a national assessment is a particularly timely under-
taking.
COMMITTEE'S EVALUATION OF
SPECIFIC PROGRAM COMPONENTS
Integration of Surface Water/Ground Water
Study Units
The original NAWQA program plan specified 120 separate
planned surface water and ground water study areas or units.
This approach hac! the potential for minimizing the important
linkages between surface and ground water systems. During
committee meetings, the committee informed the USGS that
these linkages are important in determining water quality, as
some results from the Lower Kansas River Basin pilot project
indicate.
In recognition of the important water quality implications of
surface water/ground water interaction, the USGS decided in
March 1989 to redefine the study units. The study units include
river basins in which the focus of attention is on surface water
quality and aquifer systems in which the focus of attention is on
ground water quality. The study units range from a few thou-
sand to several tens of thousands of square miles in area. The
committee is pleased to see that plans for the full program now
contain 60 integrated surface water/ground water study units.
The committee believes that this new approach is better and will
result in an improved product. However, since the integrated
study unit concept represents a new approach, it needs further
development (e.g., refinement of new study unit boundaries).
The USGS must also determine how the results from the inte-
grated units will be "scaled up" to make national inferences. It
may be that the integrated approach will make this task much
easier.
108
National Coordinating Work Groups
NA WQA Pilot Program
The National Coordinating Work Groups serve as liaisons to
the NAWQA program. Group members represent federal, state,
and local agencies. This liaison helps to ensure that many
diverse interests and needs will be considered in the NAWQA
program. The coordinating groups also serve to generate local
support and enthusiasm for the program. The committee's five
pilot site visits confirmed these facts. Liaison committee mem-
bers were generally supportive of the NAWQA program. They
were enthusiastic not only about the purely scientific aspects of
the program, but also about the effect of the program in
fostering communication, cooperation, and understanding
among agencies (federal and nonfederal).
A shortcoming in the composition of the current liaison
committees is the lack of private industry representation. Given
private industry's role in creating, identifying, and solving water
quality problems, it should be more strongly represented on the
liaison committees. Such representation would enhance the value
of the liaison committees to the USGS and promote cooperation
and understanding between the public and private sectors. Since
the importance of private industry vis-a-vis water quality issues
and problems would vary from study area to study area, in-
dustrial representation would vary according to local importance.
Retrospective Analyses
Collection and analysis of existing data are important aspects
of any study. The NAWQA program includes a retrospective
analysis of existing data and information as an integral part of
its total study; each study unit program will perform such an
analysis. These analyses are invaluable for a number of reasons.
First, the USGS will collect, synthesize, archive, and assess the
quality of large amounts of information that have been collected
by many organizations over many years. This effort alone will
be invaluable to the many users of water quality information
(e.g., government agencies as well as private industry). Second,
the expertise of the USGS in interpreting the existing data will
be critical to understanding the hydrologic, geologic, physico-
chemical, and biological processes operating in each study unit.
Third, the analysis of existing data may delineate water quality
trends that could influence the sampling efforts of the local
NAWQA projects and identify existing or potential water quality
problems that need attention from agencies or private industry.
Appendix A
109
The retrospective analyses provide a first step in developing
local, regional, and national water quality data bases and demon-
strate the need for long-term data bases to define significant
trends.
Biology
The weakness of the NAWQA program in addressing the
biological aspects of water quality cannot be overstated. The
committee has conveyed this during committee meetings to the
USGS many times in the course of its review. Attention to
biological aspects of water quality has not traditionally been one
of the strong points of the USGS. The committee is concerned
that the agency may not have adequate numbers of qualified
personnel to implement the program on a national scale. Some
committee members believe that the USGS may have to rely on
other agencies (e.g., U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) and perhaps
the academic community for expertise in biology. Other com-
mittee members believe that the USGS should ultimately develop
in-house expertise and facilities in this area. Special attention
should be given to resolving the question of how to perform the
necessary biological monitoring, such as by cooperating with the
academic community and other appropriate government agencies.
However, because a consensus on this issue has not been reached,
it will be discussed more fully at future committee meetings.
Coordination
In order to prevent needless duplication and to take ad-
vantage of other work in progress, the NAWQA program should
be coordinated with ongoing programs of other agencies (e.g.,
EPA activities under the Safe Drinking Water Act). Coordi-
nation is always going to be a major challenge. The USGS must
remain vigilant for and take advantage of, as appropriate, not
only activities already in existence, but also those activities in
the planning stages, such as EPA's proposed Environmental
Monitoring and Assessment Program. NAWQA should also be
coordinated with existing programs such as the Fish and Wildlife
Service's National Contaminant Biomonitoring Program, the
Great Lakes International Fish Contaminant Monitoring Pro-
gram, NOAA's program on environmental quality of coastal
waters, and NOAA's tissue banking program.
110
National Synthesis
NAWQA Pilot Program
The program documentation is vague on how the information
from the study units will be "scaled up" to the national level so
that a national synthesis can be accomplished. Will the national
aspect of NAWQA arise simply from the fact that the 60 study
units represent most of the nation? Or will the results from the
individual study units be presented in some fashion such that
national water quality trends will be evident and national in-
ferences can be drawn? Is the study unit scale large enough to
address national issues and yet small enough to consider local
and regional considerations? These important aspects of
NAWQA need additional thought and will be addressed by the
committee in its final report.
Characterization of Cause-Effect
Relationships and Sources
The program is unclear as to how cause-effect relationships
will be approached. This is a critical issue for the NAWQA
program. Is the study unit scale small enough to resolve cause-
effect issues? For example, the effects of land use on both
surface and ground water quality are important and must be
quantified to a greater degree than is currently being done in
some of the pilot studies. To what degree will simulation
modeling be used to articulate and quantify cause-effect
relationships? In general, the NAWQA program is vague with
regard to the question of the characterization of contaminant
sources. The USGS should give more attention to how it will
analyze the data with respect to determining cause-effect rela-
tionships.
Temporal Considerations
There are several unique characteristics of the NAWQA
program that might loosely be referred to as "temporal considera-
tions." For a given study unit, current plans call for five years
of intensive data collection followed by four years of less inten-
sive data collection activity (the "on/off" approach). The USGS
believes that the four-year off period will afford its scientists
time to assimilate and interpret data collected during the five
years of intensive sampling. During the off time, the USGS will
also assess the efficacy of the intensive sampling program so that
necessary modifications can be effected for the next sampling
Appendix A
111
period. The off period may also provide time to pursue spin-off
studies, perhaps funded wholly or partially by interested state,
local, regional, or other federal agencies. Such studies could also
be "seeded" with NAWQA funds. University researchers and
their graduate students may be used during this time to help
_
track new issues and pursue spin-off studies.
The on/off approach for data collection and evaluation is
one aspect of the study design yet to be fully considered by the
committee. It may be of more value to have data collection,
analysis and interpretation, and experimentation proceed simul-
taneously, together with continuous interaction and feedback
among these different elements. Without an analytical and
conceptual framework, data collection may lack direction.
Conversely, without appropriate and reliable data, the analyses
may lack reality and therefore have little practical value. The
committee intends to pursue this matter as it looks more closely
at the NAWQA study design.
As previously stated, the long-term nature of the proposed
program is essential. Patterns and trends will not necessarily
emerge over the short term. This is especially true in ground
water systems, where water quality trends evolve more slowly
than in surface water systems. Since NAWQA is not to be a
"plume-chasing" program, short-term monitoring of ground water
systems might not produce meaningful results. The fact that a
single agency with no regulatory or enforcement bias will be
performing long-term monitoring helps to ensure consistency,
quality control, and quality assurance. Indeed, these latter
characteristics are major NAWQA program strengths.
CONCLUSIONS
The committee is convinced that a national-scale, long-term
water quality assessment is in the best interest of the country.
In addition, the committee believes that the USGS is well quali-
fied to implement the proposed NAWQA program because of the
agency's ability to undertake the long-term commitment neces-
sary for a NAWQA-type program to be successful. It is also
preferable that the agency to carry out this type of program be
nonregulatory.
The USGS has an excellent reputation in performing its
water quality data collection programs at the national, state, and
local levels. This will be important when it comes to cooperation
with other federal, state, and local agencies. Thus, the com-
112
NAWQA Pilot Program
mittee recommends that the NAWQA program continue to be
developed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Special attention
should be given to resolving the question of performing the
necessary biological monitoring, such as cooperating with the
academic community and other appropriate government agencies.
NEXT STEPS
As is apparent from this interim report, committee delibera-
tions to date have concentrated on an evaluation of the concep-
tual framework of NAWQA and its utility. In the future, the
committee's evaluations of these aspects of the program will
continue with greater attention to details of the study design
and anticipated interpretative products. For example, the com-
mittee plans to consider in greater detail the design for integra-
tion of ground and surface water studies within the study units.
the personnel structure envisioned to perform the national
synthesis, the ability of the program to identify nationally
important cause-effect relationships, and the frequency of the
sampling program, i.e., the on/off approach. Further aspects of
program review include a consideration of the choice of
chemical constituents to be determined and the analytical
methods and levels of precision obtained with those methods.
Committee to Review the USGS
National Water Quality Assessment Pilot Program
Richard S. Engelbrecht (Chairman), University of Illinois
K. C. Bishop, III, Chevron U.S.A., Inc., San Francisco
Sandra L. Blackstone, University of Denver College of Law
Michael E. Campana, University of New Mexico
Margaret Conditt, Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati
Robert C. Cooper, University of California
David L. Freyberg, Stanford University
James Geraghty, Geraghty & Miller, Inc., Tampa
Judith L. Meyer, University of Georgia
Donald J. O'Connor, Manhattan College
Susan Stafford, Oregon State University
James Heaney (Ex-officio), University of Florida
Kenneth Potter (Ex-officio), University of Wisconsin
Sheila D. David, NRC Staff Officer
Anita Hall, Project Secretary
