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Pharmaceuticals, hormones, and other organic wastewater contaminants in U.S. streams
A recent study by the Toxic Substances Hydrology Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) shows that a broad range of chemicals found in residential, industrial, and agricultural wastewaters commonly occurs in mixtures at low concentrations downstream from areas of intense urbanization and animal production. The chemicals include human and veterinary drugs (including antibiotics), natural and synthetic hormones, detergent metabolites, plasticizers, insecticides, and fire retardants. One or more of these chemicals were found in 80 percent of the streams sampled. Half of the streams contained 7 or more of these chemicals, and about one-third of the streams contained 10 or more of these chemicals. This study is the first national-scale examination of these organic wastewater contaminants in streams and supports the USGS mission to assess the quantity and quality of the Nation's water resources. A more complete analysis of these and other emerging water-quality issues is ongoing.
Hazards, Disasters, and The National Map
Governments depend on base geographic information that describes the Earth's surface and locates features. They use this information for economic and community development, land and natural resource management, delivery of health services, and ensuring public safety. It is also the foundation for studying and solving geographically based problems. Geographic information underpins an increasingly large part of the Nation's economy. It is an important part of our national infrastructure in the same way that the Interstate Highway System is an essential element of our transportation network. Federal, State, and local response and management personnel must have current, reliable, and easily accessible geographic information and maps to prepare for, respond to, or recover from emergency situations. In life-threatening events, such as earthquakes, floods, or wildland fires, geographic information is essential for locating critical infrastructure and carrying out evacuation and rescue operations.
National Water-Quality Assessment Program: the Northern New England Basins study unit
In 1991, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Department of the Interior, began a full-scale National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) program. The objectives of the NAWQA program are to describe the present and future water quality of large, representative parts of the United States's surface- and ground-water resources and to identify the primary natural and man-made factors that affect the quality of these resources. The final product of the program will be information that may be used by water-resource policy makers and managers at national, State, and local levels. The NAWQA program encompasses 60 study units. These units are delineated by hydrologic systems that include parts of most of the Nation's major river basins and aquifer systems. Study units range in size from 1,000 mi 2 (square miles) to more than 60,000 mi 2 and represent 60 to 70 percent of the Nation's water use and population served by public water supplies. The first group of 20 study-unit investigations began in 1991. A second group of 20 study-unit investigations began in 1994, which includes the Northern New England Basins study unit.
United States Geological Survey, programs in Nebraska
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U.S. Geological Survey programs in Missouri
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Occurrence of selected organochlorine compounds in fish tissue from eastern Iowa streams, 1995
Human activities have caused dramatic changes to our Nation's landscape for over a century. Use of synthetic organic compounds in agriculture and industry has resulted in the accumulation and persistence of some of these compounds in natural systems. Concern has arisen over the contamination of our Nation's waters and the organisms that depend on them.
National Water Information System (NWIS)
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Monitoring surface-water quality in Arizona: the fixed-station network
Arizona is an arid State in which economic development is influenced largely by the quantity and quality of water and the location of adequate water supplies. In 1995, surface water supplied about 58 percent of total withdrawals in Arizona. Of the total amount of surface water used in 1995, about 89 percent was for agriculture, 10 percent for public supply, and 1 percent for industrial supply (including mining and thermoelectric; Solley and others, 1998). As a result of rapid population growth in Arizona, historic agricultural lands in the Phoenix (Maricopa County) and Tucson (Pima County) areas are now being developed for residential and commercial use; thus, the amount of water used for public supply is increasing. The Clean Water Act was established by U.S. Congress (1972) in response to public concern about water-pollution control. The act defines a process by which the United States Congress and the citizens are informed of the Nation’s progress in restoring and maintaining the quality of our waters. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) is the State-designated agency for this process and, as a result, has developed a monitoring program to assess water quality in Arizona. The ADEQ is required to submit a water-quality assessment report to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) every 2 years. The USEPA summarizes the reports from each State and submits a report to the Congress characterizing water quality in the United States. These reports serve to inform Congress and the public of the Nation’s progress toward the restoration and maintenance of water quality in the United States (Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, 1998).
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1002 area, petroleum assessment, 1998, including economic analysis
The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (1980) established the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In section 1002 of that act, Congress deferred a decision regarding future management of the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain ("1002 area") in recognition of the area’s potentially enormous oil and gas resources and its importance as wildlife habitat. A report on the resources (including petroleum) of the 1002 area was submitted in 1987 to Congress by the Department of the Interior (DOI). Since completion of that report, numerous wells have been drilled and oil fields discovered near ANWR, new geologic and geophysical data have become available, seismic processing and interpretation capabilities have improved, and the economics of North Slope oil development have changed significantly. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) commonly is asked to provide the Federal Government with timely scientific information in support of decisions regarding land management, environmental quality, and economic and strategic policy. To do so, the USGS must anticipate issues most likely to be the focus of policymakers in the future. Anticipating the need for scientific information and considering the decade-old perspective of the petroleum resource estimates included in the 1987 Report to Congress, the USGS has reexamined the geology of the ANWR 1002 area and has prepared a new petroleum resource assessment.
Southwest Geographic Science Team
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Subsurface exploration with the cone penetration testing truck
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Experimental studies of deposition at a debris-flow flume
Geologists commonly infer the flow conditions and the physical properties of debris flows from the sedimentologic, stratigraphic, and morphologic characteristics of their deposits. However, such inferences commonly lack corroboration by direct observation because the capricious nature of debris flows makes systematic observation and measurement of natural events both difficult and dangerous. Furthermore, in contrast to the numerous experimental studies of water flow and related fluvial deposition, few real-time observations and measurements of sediment deposition by large-scale mass flow of debris under controlled conditions have been made. Recent experiments at the U.S. Geological Survey debris-flow flume in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Oregon (Iverson and others, 1992) are shedding new insight on sediment deposition by debris flows and on the veracity of methods commonly used to reconstruct flow character from deposit characteristics.
U. S. Geological Survey programs in Nevada
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Water-resources activities of the U.S. Geological Survey in Alaska, 1997
The overall mission of the U.S. Geological Survey's Water Resources Division is to provide the hydrologic information and understanding needed for wise use and management of the Nation's water resources. For nearly 100 years, the U.S. Geological Survey has studied the occurrence, quantity, quality, distribution, and movement of the surface and ground water that constitutes the Nation's water resources. As the principal Federal water-data agency, the U.S. Geological Survey collects and disseminates about 70 percent of the water data currently being used by numerous State, local, private, and other Federal agencies to develop and manage our water resources. This nationwide program, which is carried out through the Water Resources Division's 48 District offices and 4 Regional offices, includes the collection, analysis, and dissemination of hydrologic data and water-use information, areal hydrologic resource appraisals and other interpretive studies, and research projects. Much of this work is a cooperative effort in which planning and financial support are shared by State and local governments and other Federal agencies.
Microbiological quality of public-water supplies in the Ozark Plateaus aquifer system, Missouri
In 1986, Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) requiring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to promulgate disinfection requirements for all public-water supplies. The USEPA promulgated the Surface Water Treatment Rule (SWTR) in June 1989 to establish disinfection requirements for surface-water supplies and for ground water under the direct influence of surface water. To complete the requirements of the SDWA, the USEPA plans to propose and promulgate disinfection requirements for ground water not under the direct influence of surface water to protect the public health of persons served by those systems.