The Tribal Water Quality Data Roadmap tool helps Tribes submit water quality data to the Water Quality eXchange (WQX). A Tribe answers six questions about existing and future work. Based on the answers, the Tribal Water Quality Roadmap tool creates a customized guide for a Tribe to use to collect and share water quality monitoring data.
CHALLENGE
In 2015, only 138 of the nation’s 271 Tribes submitted their water quality data to the Water Quality eXchange (WQX). The project was an effort to help Clean Water Act Section 106-eligible Tribes, who are interested in doing so, submit their data to WQX.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
The Roadmap project sparked not only the development of the Roadmap tool but also the creation of new, easy-to-understand WQX training documents and videos. The shared governance model provided Tribes and EPA the opportunity to work together to address a common need. The Roadmap tool was released in late 2016.
In addition to creating a custom guide on how to share water quality data with EPA, the tool initially had the ability to calculate summary statistics and plots graphs of a Tribe’s existing data in WQX using web services. This provided Tribes the opportunity to:
- View their previous submissions
- Be more consistent with reporting water quality results
- Identify quality assurance issues in the data to promote quality data submissions
RESOURCES
- Find more information at: Water Data and Tools: STORET and WQX
- The E-Enterprise Tribal Roadmap for WQX Submissions Tool can be found on the WQX/STORET webpage under “Learn More,” or directly at this link.