Water withdrawal data of selected public water systems in West Virginia, 2014 - 2020

These data were collected to support a drought-vulnerability assessment and near real-time drought awareness web tool for public water systems (PWS) on surface water supply in West Virginia. PWS withdrawal rates were evaluated against USGS low-flow stream statistics, modeled streamflow from the National Water Model, and thresholds from state drought response guidelines and ecological-flow literature. Other PWS information relevant to water management, including flow regulation and water storage is included.

Description of Data
These data are available in Excel (.xlsx) files and comma-separated text files (.csv) for access in nonproprietary formats. The "sites" file contains attribute information for each PWS intake, including flow regulation and reservoirs. The "wd" file contains the monthly withdrawal information used to generate summary statistics.

Data Sources
These data were not collected by the USGS. Monthly water withdrawal data for public water systems (PWS) was provided by West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection's Large Quantity User (LQU) reporting program. These data were used to calculate monthly withdrawal rates for selected PWS using surface water supply. The LQU dataset is self-reported. Basic quality control checks, including summary statistics, box plots, and time series plots were performed and data-entry errors were corrected when identified. PWS with redundant intakes on the same waterbody (primary and secondary) had withdrawals from the secondary intake (ID007, ID073, ID084, ID098, and ID101) reassigned to the primary intake and the secondary intake was removed from further analysis. Streamflow regulation and minimum flows were determined by a GIS tool developed by the Technical Applications and GIS Unit of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP). The presence and storage capacity of reservoirs was determined by review of information from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' National Inventory of Dams. The presence of smaller dams and weirs was determined by aerial or satellite imagery and noted, but no further effort was made to estimate storage capacity or impact on streamflow.

Note: Disclosing specific location information for PWS intakes conflicts with federal and state law and USGS policy. For this publicly-accessible USGS Data Release and the near real-time drought awareness web tool, PWS locations are aggregated to the county or 10-digit hydrologic unit code (HUC10) watershed.

Further discussion of data, methods, analysis, and limitations are included in the associated USGS Open File Report 2023-XXXX.