History of the U.S. Geological Survey's National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program

Marc A. Sylvester

Origin of the NAWQA

The origins of the USGS's NAWQA Program can be traced to the early 1980s and the persistent questions from Congressman Sidney Yates (D-Illinois) to Dallas Peck (Director of the USGS at that time) and Philip Cohen (Chief Hydrologist at that time) about the status of the Nation's water quality. During the Appropriation hearings in March 1985, it became clear to Mr. Yates that there was no unified and consistent program for national water quality assessment being performed by any Federal agency. Accordingly, Mr. Yates asked Dr. Peck and Mr. Cohen for: a memorandum on how you get there and how much money it is going to cost.

Following the Appropriations Hearings, Mr. Cohen formed an Ad Hoc Committee to develop a set of principles which could guide the USGS in designing and operating a national, perennial program of acquiring and interpreting data on surface- and ground-water-quality. The Ad Hoc Committee was comprised of four USGS scientists, two of whom Jacob Rubin and Sam Luoma were located at the Western Region office in Menlo Park, California. Dr. Rubin, who chaired the Committee, is now retired. At that time he was a research scientist working on unsaturated-zone theory, in particular infiltration and drainage. Dr. Luoma still works in Menlo Park; his research continues to focus on processes effecting trace-element accumulation in aquatic biota. In 1985, the USGS submitted a preliminary proposal for a perennial program of National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) in response to the request made by Congressman Yates.

The NAWQA Program

By 1991, the annual budget and personnel requirements for the full-scale NAWQA program were estimated to be about $60 million. Since 1991, the NAWQA program has implemented water-quality assessments by interdisciplinary teams of hydrologists, chemists, and aquatic ecologists in 51 Study Units in many of the Nation's major river basins and aquifer systems. Collectively the study units include water resources available to more than 60 percent of the population served by municipal supply and irrigated agriculture in watersheds that cover about half of the land areas of the conterminous United States.

In 2001, NAWQA began its second decade of intensive study (2001-2012). Building on the first decade of study, USGS scientists with the NAWQA program during the second-decade of study will refine the assessment of current water-quality conditions and will focus more effort on determining changes and trends in water quality and identifying and describing what natural and anthropogenic factors explain the observed water-quality conditions, changes, and trends.

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