Water Quality Portal

The Water Quality Portal (WQP) is a cooperative service sponsored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Water Quality Monitoring Council (NWQMC). It serves data collected by over 400 state, federal, tribal, and local agencies. Water quality data can be downloaded in Excel, CSV, TSV, and KML formats. Fourteen site types are found in the WQP: aggregate groundwater use, aggregate surface water use, atmosphere, estuary, facility, glacier, lake, land, ocean, spring, stream, subsurface, well, and wetland. Water quality characteristic groups include physical conditions, chemical and bacteriological water analyses, chemical analyses of fish tissue, taxon abundance data, toxicity data, habitat assessment scores, and biological index scores, among others. Within these groups, thousands of water quality variables registered in the EPA Substance Registry Service (https://iaspub.epa.gov/sor_internet/registry/substreg/home/overview/home.do) and the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (https://www.itis.gov/) are represented. Across all site types, physical characteristics (e.g., temperature and water level) are the most common water quality result type in the system.

The Water Quality Exchange data model (WQX; http://www.exchangenetwork.net/data-exchange/wqx/), initially developed by the Environmental Information Exchange Network, was adapted by EPA to support submission of water quality records to the EPA STORET Data Warehouse [USEPA, 2016], and has subsequently become the standard data model for the WQP.

Contributing organizations:

• ACWI

The Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI) represents the interests of water information users and professionals in advising the federal government on federal water information programs and their effectiveness in meeting the nation's water information needs.

• ARS

The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief in-house scientific research agency, whose job is finding solutions to agricultural problems that affect Americans every day, from field to table. ARS conducts research to develop and transfer solutions to agricultural problems of high national priority and provide information access and dissemination to, among other topics, enhance the natural resource base and the environment. Water quality data from STEWARDS, the primary database for the USDA/ARS Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) are ingested into WQP via a web service.

• EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gathers and distributes water quality monitoring data collected by states, tribes, watershed groups, other federal agencies, volunteer groups, and universities through the Water Quality Exchange framework in the STORET Warehouse.

• NWQMC

The National Water Quality Monitoring Council (NWQMC) provides a national forum for coordination of comparable and scientifically defensible methods and strategies to improve water quality monitoring, assessment, and reporting. It also promotes partnerships to foster collaboration, advance the science, and improve management within all elements of the water quality monitoring community.

• USGS

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) investigates the occurrence, quantity, quality, distribution, and movement of surface waters and ground waters and disseminates the data to the public, state, and local governments, public and private utilities, and other federal agencies involved with managing the United States' water resources.

• Resource Title: Website Pointer for Water Quality Portal.

  File Name: Web Page, url: https://www.waterqualitydata.us/

  The Water Quality Portal (WQP) is a cooperative service sponsored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Water Quality Monitoring Council (NWQMC). It serves data collected by over 400 state, federal, tribal, and local agencies. Links to Download Data, User Guide, Contributing Organizations, National coverage by state.