Water Quality

USGS Technical Assistance to Support U.S. EPA Feasibility Studies, Remedial Designs, and Remedial Actions at Woolfolk Chemical Works Superfund Site, Fort Valley, GA

USGS Technical Assistance to Support U.S. EPA Feasibility Studies, Remedial Designs, and Remedial Actions at Kerr-McGee Chemical Corporation Superfund Site, Columbus, MS

In 2002, The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers launched a collaborative effort to find more sustainable ways to manage river infrastructure to maximize benefits for people and nature. As of 2021, the Sustainable Rivers Program study area includes 40 rivers, 89 reservoirs, and 10,953 downstream river miles. The USGS South Atlantic Water Science Center and USGS Wetland and...

The Albemarle-Pamilco Drainage Study Unit (ALBE) is part of the National Water Quality Program (NWQP, formerly National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA)). NWQP is an ongoing program of the U.S. Geological Survey to provide an understanding of water-quality conditions; whether conditions are getting better or worse over time; and how natural features and human activities affect those conditions.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) has partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to assess the water-quality and geomorphologic impacts resulting from the I-26 construction projects in western North Carolina. Streamflow, precipitation, and water-quality monitoring data, coupled with periodic assessments of geomorphology, will support the NCDOT construction-site...

There is evidence that bridge deck runoff has a relatively high loading of a variety of constituents such as nutrients, solids, pesticides, metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Information on the quality of bridge deck runoff in North Carolina is, however, lacking. Stormwater permits are designed to reduce nonpoint source loadings of anthropogenically derived constituents to...

In North Carolina, excessive nutrient and sediment loadings have contributed to the degradation of surface-water quality across the state as a result of agricultural activities and population growth increases. To further understand the influences of human activities and natural processes on surface-water quality, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) developed the SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced...

Urban development can have detrimental impacts on streams including altering hydrology, increasing nutrient, sediment, and pollutant loadings, and degrading biological integrity. Stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) can be used to mitigate the effects of urban development by retaining large volumes of stormwater runoff and treating runoff to remove pollutants. This project focuses on...

The US Geological Survey (USGS) has cooperated with the State of Georgia to monitor water quality throughout the State since 1937. The current Statewide Water-quality Montoring Program is a network of 50 stations across Georgia operated in cooperation with the Environmental Protection Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GAEPD). Over the years, the temporal and spatial design...

Falls Lake has been included in the North Carolina Division of Water Quality’s 303(d) list of “impaired” waters, due to violations of the State chlorophyll-a standard caused by excessive nutrient inputs (North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Division of Water Quality, 2010a). The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission has adopted nutrient management strategies...

Floodplain and wetland areas provide critical ecosystem services to local and downstream communities by retaining sediments, nutrients, and floodwaters. The loss of floodplain functionality due to land use conversion and degradation reduces the provisioning of these services. Assessing, quantifying, and valuing floodplain ecosystem services provide a framework to estimate how floodplain systems...

Background: How safe is it to swim, wade, and boat in the Chattahoochee River today? For a highly urbanized river such as the Chattahoochee, much of the answer depends on bacteria levels in the water. This website provides "real time" turbidity data, the estimated Escherichia coli (E coli) bacteria count, the most recent E. coli bacteria counts (sample collected each Thursday), and National Park...