National Water Quality Monitoring Proposal

The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) [Subcommittee on Water Availability and Quality (SWAQ) and Joint Subcommittee on Oceans (JSO)] propose an initiative to address all three Ocean Commission recommendations in Chapter 15:  Creating a National Water Quality Monitoring Network.  The Ocean Commission recommends:

  • development of a national monitoring network that coordinates and expands existing efforts
  • that the network include coverage in both the coastal and upland areas that affect them, and is linked to the Integrated Ocean Observing System
  • that the network has clear goals, specifies core variables and an appropriate sampling framework, and is periodically reviewed and updated.

 

CEQ and NSTC request that the Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI), through the National Water-Quality Monitoring Council (Council), provide advice, counsel, and recommendations that address the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy recommendation regarding the creation of a “coordinated, comprehensive” national water quality monitoring network. The primary task of this advice is to recommend a design for a National water-quality monitoring network (hereafter referred to as the network). The network would be designed to address and integrate watershed, coastal waters, and ocean monitoring, based on common criteria and standards. The network would provide information on water quality that, when interpreted with other information such as economic and land use data, would provide relevant scientific information to assist resource management and decision making. The network design should identify the major overarching management questions that need to be addressed and the fundamental elements of this national monitoring network (such as atmospheric deposition, surface water, ground water, and water quality, including biological monitoring), emphasizing the “federally funded backbone” of water quality networks and programs. General classes of monitoring activities should be discussed, in cases where there are more programs than practically can be addressed on an individual basis, for example volunteer monitoring programs. Specific tasks are to:

 

1.       Define the elements of the recommended network  and the corresponding overarching management questions that they address, and explain how the elements interrelate;

2.       Describe how the recommended network addresses important issues and management questions through case studies of existing monitoring activities;

3.       Determine which management questions and network components are not being adequately addressed with existing activities; why the questions cannot be answered (for example, lack of data, existing data cannot be shared across boundaries); and what is needed; and

4.       Recommend specific actions intended to better coordinate existing networks so that they more effectively yield information needed to achieve the proposed network. Consider limitations of existing resources and the tradeoffs of redirecting or adding new resources.

5.       Recommend specific actions to enhance compatibility of the national water quality monitoring network with the nascent Ocean and Earth Observation Systems, as recommended by the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, including data management and quality standards.

The description of the network would draw upon case studies of existing monitoring activities to demonstrate the way it addresses important issues, and existing limitations, redundancy and monitoring needs. Examples of potential case studies include:

 

§         Mississippi River Basin and Gulf of Mexico for the issue of excess nutrients and hypoxia, including progress made by the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force.

§         Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership (PNAMP) of federal, state, and tribal governments with interest in coordinated monitoring of watershed condition, fish population, and management effectiveness. 

§         Gulf of Maine and associated areas potentially affected by invasive species and nutrients, including efforts to form a NW Atlantic Coastal Monitoring consortium.

§         Chesapeake Bay monitoring activities related to satisfying and measuring progress toward the goals of the federal and multi-state Chesapeake 2000 agreement. 

As indicated in the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy’s recommendations, NOAA, NASA, EPA, USGS, USACE, and other federal agencies as appropriate would collaborate in and support this assessment. The advice, counsel, and recommendations are being sought from the ACWI to gain participation of state, tribal, and other government and private sector entities involved in monitoring.  The framework should consider recent documents that address monitoring needs and limitations at both the national scale and for specific case studies (list follows).

This activity will:

§         Identify key management questions that a coordinated, comprehensive monitoring network must address.

§         Demonstrate the role of existing programs, their relationship, and existing and potential synergies.

§         Identify the monitoring needs that cannot be addressed by existing programs.

§         Put in perspective the degree to which monitoring needs can be satisfied by reducing redundancies among existing monitoring activities.

§         Demonstrate coordination among lead federal agencies for monitoring and their capability to work with other monitoring and stakeholder entities.

§         Identify additional mechanisms needed for state or regional monitoring councils, monitoring clearinghouses, and technical coordination that establishes standard methods and procedures 

§         Provide a basis for defining supplemental resources to fill existing monitoring gaps.

§         Provide a monitoring network design that will facilitate a stronger scientific foundation for making national, regional, and local management decisions.

 

It is expected that ACWI/Council would help to finalize this charge, and agree on an appropriate process to proceed. The tasks agreed to would be completed within one year (by January 2006) with at least one interim report to ACWI, CEQ, and NSTC in September 2005.

 

Recent reports that should be considered for this assessment include:

▪        Final Report of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy (US COP) An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century, Washington, DC (US COP 2004),  [http://www.oceancommission.gov/documents/prepub_report/welcome.html].

▪        The General Accounting Office (GAO) Report: Watershed Management: Better Coordination of Data Collection Efforts Needed to Support Key Decisions, (GAO, 2004), [http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04382.pdf].

▪        A recent report by the National Academies', NRC: Confronting the Nation's Water Problems: The Role of Research, [http://books.nap.edu/books/0309092582/html/index.html].

▪        The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (CENR) Report Assessment of Coastal Hypoxia and Eutrophication in U.S. Waters, (CENR, 2003) [http://www.oceanservice.noaa.gov/outreach/pdfs/coastalhypoxia.pdf]

▪        An Interagency report on research needs related to nutrient pollution in coastal waters: Nutrient Pollution in Coastal Waters: Priority Topics for an Integrated National Research Program for the United States (Howarth and others, 2003).

▪        Interagency work toward creating The Integrated Oceans Observing System (Parts I, II, and III) [http://www.ocean.us/documents/componentsIOOS.jsp].

§         Final Plan for the U.S. Integrated Earth Observation System [http://usgeo.gov/docs/EOCStrategic_Plan.pdf].

▪        The Heinz Center Report:  The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems.  Measuring the Lands, Waters, and Living Resources of the United States.  The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, 2002 [http://www.heinzctr.org/ecosystems/report.html]

▪        The National Academy of Public Administration Report: Understanding What States Need to Protect Water Quality.  The National Academy of Public Administration, December, 2002.  [http://www.napawash.org/pc_economy_environment/recent_publications.html#2002]

▪        The General Accounting Office Report: Inconsistent State Approaches Complicate Nation’s Effort to Identify Its Most Polluted Waters (GAO, 2002).  http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02186.pdf 

▪        The report of the CENR, Environmental Monitoring Team, Integrating The Nation’s Environmental Monitoring and Research Networks and Programs: A Proposed Framework (CENR, 1997). [http://www.epa.gov/cludygxb/Pubs/framewrk.pdf]

▪         ACWI/NWQMC Framework for Monitoring published in Water Resources IMPACT, September 2003 (Peters and Ward, 2003)  http:/acwi.gov/monitoring/pubs/0309impact.pdf

 

▪        The General Accounting Office (GAO) Report: Water Quality: Key EPA and State Decisions Limited by Inconsistent and Incomplete Data, (GAO, 2000), [http://www.gao.gov/new.items/rc00054.pdf]

 

▪        The National Academy of Science, NRC: Assessing the TMDL Approach to Water Quality Management, [http://books.nap.edu/books/0309075793/html/index.html]

 

▪        The National Academy of Science, NRC: Opportunities to Improve the U.S. Geological Survey National Water Quality Assessment Program, [http://books.nap.edu/books/0309083052/html/index.html]

 

▪        A report of the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force, Monitoring Modeling and Research Workgroup, A Science Strategy to Support Management Decisions Related to Hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico and Excess Nutrients in the Mississippi River Basin, 2004, [http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/circ/2004/1270]

 

National Water Quality Monitoring Working Group Members:

Coordinator:  Malka Pattison Malka_pattison@ios.doi.gov

Peter Grevatt, EPA

Charles Spooner, EPA

Barry Burgan, EPA

Jennifer Linn, EPA

Macara Lousberg, EPA/CEQ Oceans Task Force

Robert Mason, USGS

Toni Johnson, USGS

Gail Mallard, USGS

Beverley Getzen, USACE

Stephanie Bailenson, NOAA

Robert Magnien, NOAA

George Smith, NOAA

Bruce Parker, NOAA/NOS

Douglas Brown, NOAA

Andrew Larkin, NOAA/CEQ Oceans Task Force

Carl Lucero, USDA-NRCS

Howard Hankin, USDA/CEQ Task Force

Jared Entin, NASA

Joseph Skorupa, FWS

Gene Whitney, OSTP

Cynthia Decker, Navy

Jim Kinney, BOR