IDENTIFICATION OF OUTSTANDING RESOURCE AND IMPAIRED WATERS IN THE NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM

About This Grant

The decentralized management framework created by the Clean Water Act presents challenges to organizations and citizens trying to understand, monitor, and track water quality conditions locally, regionally, and/or nationally. CSU and the NPS Water Resources Division (WRD) have previously collaborated to ameliorate this problem over America s treasured park lands by consolidating and centralizing data, information, and maps from 56 states and territories about water quality conditions in the National Park System to make those resources readily available to the parks, the public, and other organizations so they can become part of the water quality management process. The current project continues that collaboration. CSU faculty, staff, research associates, and students will work with the NPS WRD to identify Clean Water Act outstanding resource waters classifications and impaired waters designations by states within the National Park System and use this information to update and expand existing databases and websites. The products generated by this effort will include GIS coverages as well as a website with reports containing descriptive graphical and tabular summaries of: (1) park waterbodies that are currently listed on state 303d water-quality impaired lists; (2) parks that have designated Outstanding National or State Resource Waters created by state water quality regulations; and (3) parks that contain particular types of impairments. To the greatest extent feasible, this project will extract and reformat, on a park-specific basis, data from existing databases, including individual state water quality standards systems and several databases maintained or being developed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Geological Survey (e.g. National Hydrography Dataset, STORET, 305b, and 303d). Syntheses of these data will be made to support Government Performance Results Act (GPRA), Vital Signs, State of the Parks, and Scorecard efforts as well as to empower the public to help steward water resources in parks.