The Tribal Water Quality Data Roadmap tool helps Tribes plan their activities to collect and share water quality monitoring data. The tool prompts Tribes to answer six questions about their existing and planned water monitoring activities. Based on the answers, the Tribal Water Quality Roadmap tool creates a customized guide to help the Tribe develop a plan for collecting, managing, and sharing its water quality monitoring information.
The guidance includes advice about sharing data with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Water Quality eXchange (WQX). Data shared with WQX becomes available in a national data warehouse called the Water Quality Portal (WQP), a growing repository of more than 430 million records that helps water resource managers make better decisions about protecting human health and the environment.
Only half of all eligible Tribes were sharing their water monitoring information in 2015, leaving key gaps in water quality data.
In 2015, 271 Tribes were eligible for monitoring funding under the Clean Water Act’s Section 106 program. At the time, only 138 of those eligible Tribes were submitting water quality data to EPA’s WQX. That left key gaps in the national water quality picture.
Many Tribes needed better advice about where to start and how to get engaged with the WQX and WQP. This project was a key step in providing Tribes with practical and customized guidance about establishing processes to collect, manage, and share water quality monitoring data.
E-Enterprise partners collaboratively built tools and guidance that empowered Tribes to share water quality data.
The E-Enterprise partnership brought Tribes and EPA together to build a Water Quality Data Roadmap that provides practical and clear advice for Tribal data managers. Today, Tribes can use the tool to create a custom guide on how to share water quality data with EPA. Tribes can also use the tool to calculate summary statistics and graphs from their existing data in WQX using web services. This added functionality gives Tribes the opportunity to:
- View their previous submissions;
- Submit more consistent water quality results; and
- Identify potential quality assurance issues in the data.
Other resources and information
- Find more information including training videos at Water Data and Tools: STORET and WQX.
- The E-Enterprise Tribal Roadmap for the WQX Submissions Tool can be found on the WQX/STORET webpage under “Learn More,” or directly at this link.
Improved guidance facilitates increased data sharing and better environmental decisions
With guidance from the Water Quality Data Roadmap, Tribes have access to customized advice about building programs for collecting and sharing water monitoring data. The Roadmap helps Tribes share their programs’ information to create a more complete picture of water quality conditions. The Roadmap’s analytical tools can help Tribes track their submissions to WQX, draw insights from their information, and improve data quality.
More complete and accurate water data is a crucial resource for water quality managers who need to identify areas with pollution challenges, devise pollution control strategies, and track water quality improvements.
Visit the Water Quality Portal Data Warehouse
Learn more about water quality data, WQX, and the Roadmap by visiting the EPA’s water quality website
