Announcement of Pilot Studies and Request for Statement of Interest

National Water Quality Monitoring Network for
U.S. Coastal Waters and their Tributaries

Please respond by February 23, 2007

Introduction

The National Water Quality Monitoring Council has produced a design of a National Water Quality Monitoring Network for U.S. Coastal Waters and their Tributaries (the Network) as called for in the U.S. Ocean Action Plan and with guidance from the President’s Council on Environmental Quality and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). The Network design is a framework for linking water quality monitoring in coastal bays, estuaries and the Great Lakes with observations in upland areas and offshore waters, and includes freshwater flows and contaminant input from inland and coastal rivers, ground water, and atmospheric deposition. A description of the Network design is available at http://acwi.gov/monitoring/network/design.

The next phase in the Network development is to conduct one or more Pilot Studies on a regional or sub-regional basis to test and help improve the Network design. Each study should encompass pertinent resource compartments in the region, e.g.., an estuary or a coastal bay, its watershed and upland areas, adjacent coastal ocean, the atmosphere, surface water and/or groundwater. Pilot Studies will help to refine the Network design through evaluation and selection of necessary environmental parameters, sampling protocols and details of measurements (including congeners, analogues, metabolites or derivatives). Pilot Studies will conduct an inventory of ongoing or recently concluded monitoring projects or programs, and establish relevance and utility of the identified data including data availability and comparability.

Comparison of on-going monitoring with that specified in the Network design will improve estimates of the costs for improving data quality and filling data gaps. It is also important that the evaluations performed in the Pilot Studies help reinforce local and regional water quality monitoring and related research and modeling activities; relate to the planned architecture of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS); and identify common ocean research priorities as outlined in a recent report of the NSTC Joint Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology (JSOST).

An interagency working group of staff from the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy will coordinate activities related to the Pilot Studies.  The National Water Quality Monitoring Council, a subgroup of the Advisory Committee on Water Information will continue to play a role in reviewing and helping to coordinate the Pilot Studies.

What is Expected from a Pilot Study
Pilot Study partners will establish a project team that will undertake the following:

1. Inventory current data and information collection in the study area at a scale similar to that proposed in the Network design. Every attempt needs to be made to find and acknowledge current monitoring useful to the Network.  However, there will be no need for an inventory of monitoring small streams, local aquifers, lakes and reservoirs, or most compliance monitoring.  The interagency working group will assist the Pilot Study teams in evaluating whether a specific monitoring program needs to be included in the inventory of monitoring programs that relate to the Network design.  The inventory should include information about locations of monitoring sites, frequency of monitoring, measured analytes or derived parameters, and institutional responsibilities. The format for the data inventory will be established by the Pilot Study teams and the interagency working group.
2. Identify gaps between existing monitoring and that indicated by the Network design.  Estimate costs of on-going monitoring and costs to fill identified gaps.
3. Investigate data comparability and data sharing issues in the study area and recommend procedures for their resolution.  This includes comparability issues among existing programs as well as comparability between existing data collection and any new data collection needed to fill data gaps.  A key component of the Network design is improving data storage and access functions, including those identified in the Data Management and Communications Plan of the IOOS.
4. Prepare a report that documents activities and accomplishments of the Pilot Study and participate in preparing reports that refine Network observational requirements.  Because reports from the pilot studies will be important for estimating the costs of implementation, it is important that they be prepared in final draft form by early January 2008.  Report format and content will be established by the Pilot Study teams and the interagency working group.
5. Identify management issues in the study area that would be better addressed if the monitoring gaps noted in item 2 above were filled and data were more comparable and accessible.  Examples of such management issues could include habitat impairment, limits on existing uses of the water body, loss of wetlands, or excess nutrients.

The Council, through its monitoring design teams, will stay informed of Pilot Study progress.  The interagency staff will assist teams formed by the National Water Quality Monitoring Council in refining some of the observational requirements for the Network, including an appropriate suite of chemical and biological measurements and their reporting formats. As part of this refinement, the Pilot Study project team may also outline monitoring approaches for wetlands and coastal beaches that have not been specified in the Network design. Finally, the project team will identify scientific experts in the region that can provide insights into the most appropriate sampling requirements in the Pilot region, including sampling site selection, a measurement program and data reporting formats, and quality assurance and quality control procedures.

The interagency staff will provide quarterly reports to coordinating committees established under the U.S. Ocean Action Plan.  As part of the reporting effort, Pilot Study participants will be asked to provide information regarding the status of their work.  These reports will be annotated summaries of activities and accomplishments and will provide a way for the larger monitoring community to be informed about the pilot phase and advancements in the Network design.

Funding and Resources
The pilot phase of Network development will be conducted with no new Federal funds.  The principal Federal agencies, NOAA, EPA, and USGS will provide staff support for inventories of their data holdings and will participate in analyses of data management issues.  Federal agency staff will coordinate work related to refining the Network design for national issues and will work with Pilot Study partners on study area issues.  Pilot Study partners will be asked to provide in-kind services to inventory their data holdings and participate in other pilot activities.

Benefits to conducting the data inventory and gap analysis required for Pilot Studies include:  (a) efficiencies that can be realized through cooperation and collaboration; (b) stronger justification for monitoring support through demonstration that there is little or  no duplication of effort; and (c) application and relevance of regional observations and monitoring programs to national efforts, such as IOOS.

Demonstration Phase of Network Development
The next phase of Network development will be Demonstration Studies which may begin as early as Fiscal Year 2008.  During that phase new Federal funds will be needed to add sensors in the field collect and analyze environmental samples, improve data sharing and data management, and other activities to move towards a fully implemented Network in the Demonstration Study areas.  It is expected that the partners who conduct the pilot studies will be strong candidates for funding during the demonstration phase, although other areas may be considered. 

Criteria for selection as a Pilot Study

1. Identification and commitment of resources, including in-kind contributions, from the project team that should include multiple partners.
2. A commitment to successfully complete the Pilot Study and produce a draft report by January 2008.
3. Pilot Study areas can be entirely within one State.  Pilot Study areas that include no more than three States are preferred.  Pilot Studies with several monitoring program data sources are preferred.
4. Ability to leverage on-going Federal efforts and cooperative efforts among the monitoring community in the study area.
5. Identification of water quality-related resource management issues in the region that could be addressed more effectively if monitoring gaps were filled and data were more comparable and accessible.
6. The ability to actively communicate the role of the Network and the progress of pilot studies to the coastal monitoring community nationally during the Pilot Study. 
7. The ability to organize and integrate existing monitoring projects into a cohesive program that could demonstrate the benefits of a fully implemented Network.
8. Knowledge of and accessibility to monitoring data from appropriate resource compartments in the Pilot Study area. There do not need to be large quantities of data available for each of the compartments, but the study team will need to inventory the data that do exist.  For study areas where direct ground-water discharge or atmospheric deposition of contaminants to the coastal environment is known or expected to be significant, an inventory of ground-water and atmospheric deposition data sources should be included.

Statement of Interest in becoming a Pilot Study
Groups interested in conducting a Network Pilot Study should send their statement of Interest, electronically or in paper (5 copies requested) for receipt no later than February 23, 2007 to:

Judith B. Griffin
Executive Secretary, National Water Quality Monitoring Council
Mail Stop 417 USGS National Center
12201 Sunrise Valley Drive
Reston, VA
20192

jbgriff@usgs.gov

Statements of interest should be between 5 and 10 pages in length. At the minimum, the statement of interest should include the following:

1. Description of the proposed study area with at least one map.
2. Name and contact information for the primary contact person.
3. List of key study partners, with institutional affiliations and clear statements of interest in participating in the Pilot Study phase of the Network, including a brief description of contributions that proposed partners will make to the Pilot Study effort.  It is anticipated that additional partners may join the effort at a future date.
4. An approach and a detailed course of activities to accomplish the Pilot Study along with identification of anticipated milestones.
5. Description of any on-going collaboration among study partners such as data sharing efforts or cooperative data management efforts.
6. A list of already-planned regional meetings or events that can serve to aid in coordination and communication during the Pilot Studies.
7. Brief description of major Federal and non-Federal monitoring programs active in the study area.

For additional information, please contact:
Charles Spooner at spooner.charles@epa.gov
Gail Mallard at gmallard@usgs.gov
Jawed Hameedi at jawed.hameedi@noaa.gov

U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
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Thursday, 21-Jun-2007 13:02:50 EDT