Surface Water Quality

Surface Water Quality provides surface water quality data collected in the US

The Surface Water Quality application provides testing results for water monitored by state, federal, tribal and local agencies. The data is collected from the Water Quality Portal (WQP) which is a service sponsored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Environmental Protection Services (EPA), and the National Water Quality Monitoring Council (NWQMC).

This application gathers data from the WQP, over the last 16 months, and compares the results against the National Recommended Water Quality Criteria, which are developed by the EPA under Section 304(a) of the Clean Water Act. These recommended criteria represent specific levels of chemicals or conditions in a water body that are expected to not cause adverse effects to human health. EPA provides recommendations for consumption of “water + organism” and “organism only” human health criteria; however, with this application, we only consider the less stringent "organism only" criteria to provide a reference for individuals who wish to use a body of water for recreational purposes (e.g. fishing and swimming).

Features:

- A map of monitoring stations

- Click on a monitoring station to get details about each monitoring station and a list of the most recent results for each chemical or condition

- Click on a result to get details about the recommended limit, if available and historical results for a chemical or condition

Warning: This application is designed only to present existing data provided through the WQP and is not intended to by a primary source for evaluating if a body of water is safe to use for fishing, swimming or other recreational purposes. It is also important to note that water quality can vary significant over time and in response to various events (e.g. storms, drought, temperature, etc.).