Estimating Water Use in the United States A New Paradigm for the National Water-Use Information Program (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-9
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To meet these objectives, USGS water use specialists work with state and local agencies that collect water use data for many purposes, such as supporting regulatory programs, fostering better water management, and determining of customer charges for water. The term water use refers to all instream and offstream uses of water for human purposes from any water source.
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By studying state water use data collection and estimation programs, by analyzing data from the national water use summaries, and by examining parallel activities of other federal agencies, the committee arrived at a new vision for the future NWUIP. GOALS FOR WATER USE INFORMATION What kind of national water use information program is needed, and what role should the USGS play in that program?
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The committee was impressed by the increasing availability of geospatial information on water resources generated by state regulatory programs, the USGS, and other federal agencies. In these programs, tabular data inventories describing water facilities are converted into mapped locations with attached attributes.
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It also includes scientifically assessing the impacts of water use on aquatic ecosystems, on the hydrologic cycle, and on the sustainability and vulnerability of the nation's water resources. Within the committee's framework, the NWUIP would have two broad types of products: water use reports and water resource assessments.
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Investigations of the reliability and sustainable use of the nation's water resources require a fundamental understanding of the role of water use in the hydrologic cycle. The NWUIP should therefore be viewed as much more than a data collection and database management program.
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Recommendation: To better support water use science, the USGS should build on existing data collection efforts to systematically integrate datasets, including those maintained by other federal and state agencies, into datasets already maintained by the NWUIP. WATER USE ESTIMATION In practice, estimates of total water use for counties, states, watersheds, and aquifers are based on a combination of available data and surveys, supplemented by indirect estimation methods where survey data are unavailable.
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The committee's investigation of this Arkansas dataset showed SRS can produce reasonably accurate direct estimates of permitted withdrawals, and these results suggest that a rigorous comprehensive evaluation of the use of statistical sampling and estimation methods in the NWUIP may have value. Other states that similarly maintain comprehensive water use databases provide natural experimental settings for the systematic evaluation of these methods.
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This approach to water use data collection, which is more comprehensive and integrated than that used in most other states, creates the data structures and framework needed to track changes in both water quantity and quality as water moves through the landscape. The intimate linkage between water quality and water quantity creates both opportunity and need for better connections and integration among the NWUIP, the National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA)
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The committee does not see the NWUIP as simply a data collection and database management program focused on county-level categorical water use. Rather, the committee finds that a natural role for the NWUIP would be to complement and become actively integrated with the USGS's other efforts to provide unbiased science-based information about the adequacy and sustainability of the nation's water resources.
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