The USGS Water-Use Data and Research (WUDR) program is pleased to announce the recipients of FY17 cooperative agreements. Awards were made to agencies in 15 States, for a total of $1.32M in funding.
| Department Name | Project Title | Project Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection | Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, State of Connecticut, Water Use Data Compilation and Quality Assurance Project | Connecticut is beginning to compile water use data electronically. This project will build upon efforts to organize, centralize and report past water use data as well as develop a methodology for future data organization, collection, and reporting. A database has been developed in concert with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) New England Water Science Center to collect baseline tier information and efforts are currently underway to populate it. The goal of this project is to continue to compile and report as much of the information available for Tier 1, as well as Tier 2 and Tier 3 where possible, and to determine what additional information is needed to make improvements. |
| Idaho Department of Water Resources | Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR) Water Use Data Improvement and Delivery for Idaho | The Idaho Department of Water Resources proposes that funds be used to improve the collection, quality assurance, and transfer of water use data by targeting irrigation, public supply, and industrial use categories. The three main tasks of this project are to identify points of water diversion and make records of those diversions; improve metadata standardization, data discoverability, and data delivery; and diagram potential database improvements associating water measurement locations and measurement data with existing water right information. |
| Illinois State Water Survey | Illinois State Water Survey, Water Well and Intake Records Program, USGS Water Use and Data Research Standards Development for Illinois | The Illinois State Water Survey wishes to better support improved water use data collection, quality assurance, and dissemination efforts by creating a more accurate and robust water well and intake records inventory. Support is needed to maintain and improve the efforts of the groundwater and surface water records room. By cataloging older records, tracking down new high-capacity wells and intakes across the state, and supporting archival and digitization of records, the living inventory of wells and intakes will be more accurately represented and the data gaps created by lack of consistent staff and support for the groundwater and surface intake records maintained at the ISWS will be addressed. |
| Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Water Resources | Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Water Resources, Kansas Water Use and Water Right Database Migration, Part 2 | The Kansas Department of Agriculture Division of Water Resources' Water Rights Information System proposes to continue database improvements such as building new reports, building interfaces with other programs, establishing routine data checks, developing quality control/assurance queries to check for common issues, and other improvements. This project has been proposed in order to improve water use and water right data transferability, quality, and accessibility to interested parties. |
| Kentucky Division of Water | Kentucky Division of Water-Kentucky Geological Survey Aquifer Designation Project for Kentucky’s Water Use Program Kentucky Division of Water, Commonwealth of Kentucky, Kentucky Geological Survey, University of Kentucky | This project proposes to synthesize existing well-construction, geological, and hydrogeological data needed to identify and designate aquifers being used by industry and public water suppliers and will involve the compilation of existing data in multiple electronic or digital databases. The project will also improve Kentucky Tier I level water-use data by designating the aquifers that supply 87 public water utilities, 62 industrial self-supplied users, and a subset of unregulated high-volume irrigation wells. Products will include a database listing Public Water Suppliers and industrial wells as well as pertinent ancillary data, and a statewide digital hydrogeological framework database, which will identify major aquifers by lithology and in proper stratigraphic sequence. |
| Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection | MassDEP Data Improvements for Water-Use Estimation in Massachusetts | The Massachusetts Department of the Environment proposes to improve many water-use data collection and management efforts in Massachusetts. Improvements in data collection methods will include a conversion from paper to electronic collection in several water-use categories; better estimation of self-supplied domestic use; and a potential update to cranberry bog consumptive use estimation. Additional data types to be collected include source aquifer types and irrigated acreages of farms and golf courses. Data management will be enhanced through reduced errors in public water supply reporting; consistent use of unique source identifiers; updates to water-use databases and source-location datasets; and establishing metadata procedures with the USGS. |
| Missouri Department of Natural Resources' Missouri Geological Survey | Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ Missouri Geological Survey proposes to address two of the three USGS priorities in the grant program announcement. This will include educating major water users on the reporting requirements to increase quantity and quality of water use data collected. The proposal also includes provisions to determine sources of water (HUC-8 and aquifer) and identify water type for major water users. | The Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ (MoDNR) Missouri Geological Survey (MGS) proposes to educate fellow government workers who have direct contact with irrigators, give presentations directly to irrigators, and publish documents to assist the Missouri Geological Survey (MGS) staff with outreach efforts. This project will educate major water users on the reporting requirements in order to increase quantity and quality of water use data collected. To improve the tier level for irrigation, public supply, and industrial categories, MGS will distinguish between water used for crop irrigation and water used for golf course irrigation and contact golf courses to determine the amount of water used for irrigation. Additionally, eight-digit hydrologic unit codes (HUC-8) for surface water sources and producing aquifers for groundwater sources for all MWUs, as well as water type (fresh vs. saline) will be determined. |
| Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation | Estimating Agricultural Irrigation Water Use and Efficiency in Montana | This project proposes developing a method for estimating withdrawals for irrigated agriculture at the HUC-8 watershed scale from estimates of consumptive use of crop irrigation water using the Operational Simplified Surface Energy balance, and estimates of water use efficiencies calculated for selected irrigation distribution projects in order to quantify agricultural water use. This study will develop methods to improve water use estimates for irrigated agriculture in areas where measured data is not available. The results of this study will include Tier 1, 2, and 3 data products, and will improve tier levels by increasing the spatial and temporal resolution of irrigation withdrawal and consumption estimates, as well as providing greater continuity and consistency in these estimates. |
| Nebraska Department of Natural Resources | Nebraska Department of Natural Resources, Nebraska Statewide, Data Acquisition Process Development for Eight Specific Water Uses | This project is the first phase of a program designed to acquire, store, and share annual water use data for eight specific water uses typically underreported in Nebraska. The four specific tasks in this phase include researching existing state data acquisition programs in other states, developing data acquisition processes for target uses from the information gathered in task 1, developing a prototype database to house the new data, and hosting coordination meetings with the USGS and other cooperating agencies. Water use data will be stored within a centralized database, and water use reports will provide summaries for all reporting needs. This will be a multi-year program with two phases, each funded separately. |
| Nevada Division of Water Resources | Nevada Division of Water Resources Meters Database Update and Expansion for the State of Nevada | The Nevada Division of Water Resources proposes to improve and expand collection of water use data, improve quality assurance, and increase the transferability of data collected and maintained. This will be done by working with USGS staff to determine data needs, format compatibility, reporting frequency, and ways to improve collaborative efforts and ensure that data collected and reported are compatible with USGS data requirements; expanding the current NDWR-maintained water use database to customers across the State and entering all historical pumpage data not currently in the database; conducting field work to verify site and totalizer meter information for newly added sites, and conducting quality assurance checks on all data; and making technical enhancements to a NDWR-maintained water use database to improve its accuracy, reliability, usability, and to ensure long-term data accessibility. |
| Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection | Quality Assurance Enhancements to Web Based Water Use Reporting Application to support Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Water Use Data Program | To improve Pennsylvania's water use data program in regards to data collection, quality assurance, and delivery, this project proposes enhancements to PADEP’s Chapter 110 electronic reporting application accessed through DEPGreeenPort. Proposed enhancements will improve quality assurance of reported water use data by linking Chapter 110 Sub Facility and Primary Facility reports. |
| Utah Division of Water Rights | Utah Division of Water Rights proposal to improve applications for water use data collection, storage and transmission. | The Utah Division of Water Rights proposes to improve online water use reporting tools for Industrial/Commercial users; improve database storage of water use data for Public Supply, Industrial, and Commercial data; and create a new program to transmit data electronically to the USGS and other entities. Additionally, improvements will be made to improve the storage of the data such that it can be easily organized and retrieved. |
| Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation | Proposal to improve the availability, quality and transfer of water use data estimated and collected statewide by the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. | To improve data quality, availability, and transfer, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation proposes a 5-fold plan. This includes locating a high percentage of wells in the Vermont well completion database and assigning codes to those wells, moving snowmaking data to a database or spreadsheet, initiating review and revision of the Vermont Water Use database, populating a database with information and GPS locations for large volume groundwater withdrawals, and determining intake locations and assigning HUC 8 code to community water systems and both non-transient and transient non-community water systems. |
| Virginia Department of Environmental Quality | Consumptive Use Data Transfer, Export, and Analysis | This project will leverage National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) data to improve consumptive use estimates for water users in Virginia, and develop transferrable tools that can repeat this process in other states. This project will allow Virginia to develop a set of data retrieval and export tools to supply data to Virginia's data system, and to then export withdrawal, discharge, and consumptive use data from the system in a machine-readable format and also to leverage this data to estimate consumptive use across user categories, assess trends in consumptive use, and develop statistical models for estimating non-reported consumptive use. Software clients will be developed to retrieve facilities and time series, run procedures, and upload data which will then be linked to withdrawal sites to calculate facility and watershed level estimates and summarize consumptive use. Data collected and created for this project will include all water use categories within Virginia. |
| West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Water and Waste Management, Water Use Section | Improvements to the Large Quantity User Survey and GIS Web Applications for the Water Use Section including the creation of a Consumptive Use Study and Spring and Well Reporting Tool for the State of West Virginia. | This project consists of initiating a consumptive use study, creating a more effective data collection methodology for areas of limited data, and improving upon the Large Quantity User database, which will allow integration of West Virginia’s water-use data into categories used by the USGS. This will improve data collection, quality assurance, and delivery of West Virginia water-use data. This plan also proposes redeveloping the Water Resources Management Plan mapping tool, allowing greater flexibility in application customization and enhancing data accessibility in the field. There will also be a few minor enhancements for the Water Withdrawal Tool in order to allow it to display predicted streamflow, making it more valuable as a planning resource. The creation of a WV spring and well reporting tool in the form of a web interface which crowdsources voluntary information on privately owned wells and springs has also been proposed. The data collected from this tool will be directed to a designated geodatabase. Campaigns, press releases, and conference demos will follow after its creation to increase its effectiveness. |
Below are related information links for the Water-Use Data and Research Program
Water-Use Data and Research (WUDR) program
The USGS Water-Use Data and Research (WUDR) program provides financial assistance through cooperative agreements with State water resource agencies to improve the availability, quality, compatibility, and delivery of water-use data that is collected or estimated by States.
Water-Use Data and Research program: Proposals and awards
Water-Use Data and Research (WUDR) financial assistance is awarded in a competitive process each Federal Fiscal Year. The funding cycle begins with the WUDR Program Announcement being made available on Grants.gov. State water resources agencies can then prepare proposals for improving their water-use data under the priorities described in an approved workplan. All submitted proposals are reviewed...
Below are related information links for the Water-Use Data and Research Program
Water-Use Data and Research (WUDR) program
The USGS Water-Use Data and Research (WUDR) program provides financial assistance through cooperative agreements with State water resource agencies to improve the availability, quality, compatibility, and delivery of water-use data that is collected or estimated by States.
Water-Use Data and Research program: Proposals and awards
Water-Use Data and Research (WUDR) financial assistance is awarded in a competitive process each Federal Fiscal Year. The funding cycle begins with the WUDR Program Announcement being made available on Grants.gov. State water resources agencies can then prepare proposals for improving their water-use data under the priorities described in an approved workplan. All submitted proposals are reviewed...