Event ID:
693014
Event Started:
3/28/2007 12:47:59 PM ET
Please stand by for realtime captions.
Good day and welcome to this afternoon's Webcast sponsored by the U.S. Environmental protection agency's watershed a academy. The title of today's Webcast is: Key internet tools for Watershed Management. I'm Don Way, with EPA's non-source control branch and I'll be your moderator today.
We'll get under way here shortly but as we wait for others to join us allow me to cover a few housekeeping notes. These are especially important as participation in this seminars is filled to capacity. The materials in this Webcast had been reviewed by EPA staff for technical accuracy; however, the views of the speakers and the speakers organizations are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of EPA. When a commercial enterprise, product, or publication is mentioned, it does not mean that EPA endorses them. I will mot that because today's topic is on EPA tools, we probably do endorse these.
When you registered you were directed to this seminars's specific web address. Seminars homepage as we call it has a short abstract of today's session. If you have questions for our speakers after today's presentation send them an e-mail. You'll find their e-mail addresses on this homepage. In a minute I'll Explain how to submit questions during the Live Webcast today.
On the left-hand side bar of the homepage, notice think is a links button. The links page has a series of informative web links and resources on today's topic and is it is archived indefinitely. The links page also has a rebroadcast session where you can access to listen to the seminars after today's live presentation. The sound track of the seminars will also be available as a podcast so in the near future you'll be able to access the slides and listen to a recording of today's Live Webcast. Also on the left-hand side bar is the button for the online feedback form. You'll be reminded about this at the end of the seminars today.
Okay! For those of you who just joined us by phone we require that you mute your phone during the seminars today. The Webcast has several question and answer intermissions built in at which point you're welcome to take your phone off mute and ask a question. We have a lot of people participating today online and on the phones, so we may not get to all of your questions today. Now, please join us on Slide One of the presentation. If you are viewing today's slides online, by now you should have clicked on the Go To Seminars button and be on Slide number One of the presentation. If you are following slides online, not the navigation buttons at the top of the page. I'll run through some of these buttons now.
To submit questions during the seminars, click the button showing a question mark. You don't have to wait until the question and answer period to submit your questions. In fact encourage you to submit them in advance of the question and answer sessions. If you experience technical difficulties with the audio stream, you may use the question mark button to alert us.
Please include a telephone number where you can be reached and a technician will help you trouble shoot the problem. If you would like to activate the closed captioning feature, simply click on the CC button. If you're going to use closed captioning, you must have internet explorer Version 5.5 or higher. The speaker will announce the number of each slide as she progresses through today's material, so you will know when to advance. Phone participants, please monitor your participation and noise levels. Now, at this time, please mute your phones. Everybody is muted I hope so I believe we're ready to kickoff the session. We all know that information is power and that information is vital to making sound science based decisions on restoring water bodies and protecting our watershed through it's various water programs, EPA is gathering information on water quality, affluent from industries and other facilities and have permits to discharge into waters in the sucks, studies on reducing polution loads to restore impaired water bodies and other information with bearing on watershed but many of us maybe stumped when it comes to hunting down and getting this information for our own purposes. Today's Webcast will show you reporting tools, mapping tools and query tools that EPA has built to access this information and that is freely available to anyone with internet access.
As a bonus, other resources that EPA offers to help build capacity for Watershed Management will be presented including professional networking, training on watershed topics, funding for watershed projects and technical guidance on best Management practices. Some tools are found on straightforward interactive web pages while others involve multi-step queries and even map- based queries. To navigate us through all this today, is our expert, and our speaker, Mrs. Ann Su John. She is an environmental specialist at Tetratech Incorporated. She has a background in watershed and GIS. She has worked on the data site developing some of the national data sets which shesupported the development of base ins, a GIS based watershed analysis tool. In terms of the user end, she has developed the hands-on training for us to train others in using the EPA's internet available tools. With that, let's now go to Ann sue.
Gee, thank you, Don. Good afternoon. Greetings, everyone. Glad you all could make it on the phone lines and fiber optic cables and DSL lines and even the airwaves if you have a wireless connection. Isn't the internet a cool thing?
Well, before we launch into our " Cool" internet tools proper, I want to set the context of Watershed Management first, which Don actually did quite well in his introduction. Let's everybody move to Slide Two. EPA, along with State and local government partners as well as citizens groups and watershed groups is gathering information on the nations water bodies in order to better manage the nations water resources and this happens in the context of the clean water act which this slide attempts to boil down rather simplistically.
First of all, you'd start with water quality standards that are set and they are appropriate for a water body's designated use which could be agricultural irrigation or a more sensitive use might be primary contact recreation like swimming.
Then, under law, states are required to monitor and assess whether these water bodies are meeting their designated uses, whether they are in compliance with what their water quality standards or not, and if they are not, you move down to that third box, which highlights that these impaired waters have to be put on a list of 303-B list and studies which quantitatively determine how much the luingz loading has to be reduced to bring that water body back into compliance with water quality standards are done. These studies are called TMDL's and at that point or perhaps earlier, simply to prevent water impairments, you would develop a watershed plan to restore water bodies and through the watershed plan, you would take into account all of the sources of or polution that might be happening in the watershed including point and non-point sources.
Now this entire process generates data. It's public data. It belongs to you, you paid for it, and it's appropriate that you use it because well the government alone can't solve the water polution problems. It takes partnership and it takes all our efforts for something as integral as the health of our waters and by the way, this Webcast is certainly not a comprehensive training on the Clean Water Act but if you did want to take a self paced training course think is a really good one on that hyperlink that I've got on the slide.
Let's go ahead and move to Slide Three. So you've got all of this data that's being generated and groups around the country are looking to use that data to put together efficient, targeted plans to restore and protect our waters. So EPA recently published a guidance on developing watershed plans. You can download it at the URL on this slide, and this handbook lays out a logical, sequential process to develop a comprehensive watershed plan. It has technical guidance, resources, examples, references, how to's, explanations, common methodologies, and helps to promote a comprehensive consideration of all the activities in the watershed that can have an impact, and more, it promotes consistency with across watersheds who are trying to do this around the country.
So I do I bring this up? Let's move to slide four. Well, the handbook lays out a sequential process in developing a watershed plan, and it identifies actually six steps which you can see starts with building partnerships and characterizing the watershed and then goes through to set appropriate restoration goals and identifying good solutions, and then implementing those solutions and then sort sort of like a feedback loop, measures progress, makes adjustments, and improves the plan as you continue to do this process, so it's sort of that's why it's shaped like a loop there.
Well, today's Webcast will present EPA, internet available tools to address each step in this process, and that's the sequence in which this Webcast is laid out. Caveat, tools may be applicable to more than one step, and also, the bulk of the tools I present today will fall in the characterized watershed step, recognizing that in the implementation phase, there are fewer, you know, one side fits all, ready to plug & play tools where that step I'll present more things like guidance manuals for management techniques and so on.
Also, another kavr yacht, you know, there are other federal agencies that have several tools pertinent to Watershed Management, and I'm not presenting those, but the guidance, the draft watershed planning guidance has a lot of those tools included as well.
So, I'm going to show you first a series of tools, for step one which is to build partnerships to Galvanie resources & Partners to help meet your Watershed Management aim. Let's move to Slide Five.
Wonderful. Well, when I thought about how to start this off, I thought well, let me first dive in by first figuring out a watershed address. Commonly, people know their five digit zip code, not as frequently do people know their-did [indiscernible]. The eight digit code is simply a watershed defined at a particular scale, or a level of zoom. Now, a a lot of data on watersheds is organized by the eight digit, so it's really important to start off knowing it, and your watershed offers you a way to find that eight digit number, that eight digit watershed address through a place that's familiar to you in that watershed. So when you go to EPA.gov/surf, click on " Locate your watershed" and in the textbook under the cap find Place title, simply type in the place name. Now don't type in a comma or a State extension because what the search does is it matches your input against a large, census bureau place name database and it will give you a list of results that matches the place. I typed in Fairfashing in this example and there's one in Ohio, there's one in Virginia, there's a city and a Faifax county so along that list of places, I selected the place that I was most interested and it was actually Fairfax county that I intended so let's move to Slide Six to look at the results of what that looks like.
Here, you'll see the boundary of Fairfax County shown in the State of Virginia and overlapping the boundary of the place that I selected are the eight digit HUX that are intersecting Fairfax county, so when you click on the particular eight digit HUX that you're interested, there are two in this instance and I'm going to choose the western most one. You'll see what that looks like on Slide Seven. Let's move to cap slide Seven. Now, this is kind of like the MySpace of your selected watershed. Every watershed in the country has a similar home site or a homepage that looks exactly the same, and what it offers is a variety of links with information customized for your selected eight digit HUK.
Now, first off, let me assure you that you're not going to see this sort of red oval on your web page when you go there. That's something just for the slide show, but I use that red oval to point out that immediately, I can figure out my watershed name, in this case, middle Potomoc and the catalog unit eight digit code which is 02070008. Now, what else can you see on this website?
Well there are a number of links and I will go through some of them on slide eight so let's go ahead and move to slide eight. Wow. Oval! Oval festival here!
In the next four slides, I'm going to show you what I've circled in red on this web page. There are four things I have circled in red on this web page , and I'll be going through each of them in the next four slides.
The green oval there simply wants to point out to you that EPA has a number of other databases which have information pertinent or that are locationally relevant to this particular watershed and those databases are linked. They include databases on air, on superfund sites, on has ord us waste sites, on toxic release sites, drinking water supply. All of that information customized to your eight digit watershed.
But I'm going to focus on some really cool fast information I can get by launching off my watershed's homepage. Let's move to slide nine to look at the first of these four things. It's environmental websites. Through this link, you can see a collection of websites that have relevance to your eight digit HUK. Let's move to Slide Ten. You can also link to a database extraction actually of citizens groups that are working in your eight digit HUK and in that zip code represented by your county.
So this is actually a database called " Adopt your watershed" and you can see if you can read the slide that you not only get the name of the citizens group but also the contact person and the e-mail, it's very easy to make connections this way with people at work already in your watershed that you may want to connect with as you gather resources for doing some Watershed Management.
Now, I want to point out that if you are a citizen group and you are not in this database, please make sure you go to this page and add yourself in because this is sort of like free publicity for you and people may be able to find you this way and if you are already in adopt your watershed database, make sure your information is up-to-date.
Let's move to cap slide 11. Now, because of interfederal agency agreements with the U.S. GS, you can quickly link fromsurf your watershed on EPA's web server to a list of stream gauge stations that are in your eight digit HUK, and if you were to click on select one of those stations, you could get data such as gauge height and discharge. You could get it realtime data the past few days or some statistical summaries, and this is all available right from that homepage of your particular eight digit watershed.
Let's go ahead and move to the next slide, Number 12. On the graphic on the right hand side, I had put a circle and that links you to EPA's watershed hub page, and we'll be coming back to this because this is really a cool, quick link kind of site, but I wanted to point out that EPA knows what matters. You want money to do watershed planning and restoration? They've got it. Look under targeted watershed grants page, look in the catalog of federal funding for watersheds. You're going to have resources there to get funding.
Also, the watershed Academy is a very interesting site to get training and courses, for example, the Clean Water Act course is on the Watershed Academy site. Let's move on to slide 12.
Well, I showed you the adopt your watershed database but in today's age, please don't limit finding partners to your zip code or your eight digit HUK. There's the whole worldwide web out there and you can network online to find communities & Partners that can help you with your watershed issues that may have already experienced with some of the issues you are facing and can offer you real world experience. So, I clicked on that down arrow which brings up a pop-up list, and there are some questions written there to just take me to the links that I'm looking for, and I selected the question: Who's talking about my watershed, because, that's how we gather information.
Let's move to Slide 14. Well, there's quite a few resources that EPA offers for online information sharing and networking. There are some really good list servers. I want to point out the ones that are very pertinent to watershed issues. Water news, watershed news, the VOL monitor list serving, volunteer monitoring issues and all associated with that, N P S non-point source info and others. Now, what are the benefits of joining one of these list servers? Well, you can throw a question out there and you'll get it answered to and listen to by experts from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives and even if you're just hanging out on these list servers you can enjoy really thought provoking discussions on sort of the issues of the day, things that you won't find written in a guidance manual or a textbook, or even in a newsletter because this is real world, the benefit of real world experience coming through in informal exchanges among participants on these list servers.
You can also receive timely announcements of conferences , seminars, Webcasts and so fourth. I wanted to give you a quick sample of some questions that have recently been asked on the N PS info list server. Here are some questions: How are localities funding purchases of open space? Whatregs are effective at keeping livestock out of streams? Here is another person who was looking for information on insuring and funding green roof and modeled building codes to support their use. So, in response to these questions, people are discussing things and sending back really involved answers. So clicking on any of those links will launch you to that list server page where you can subscribe. But, I wanted to point out, there is a bigger list there, where I've circled EPA's public list servers so let's move to Slide 15 to look at what you can get from EPA's public list servers.
EPA has actually over 100 public list servers with all kinds of topics including PCB's in the Hudson River, air topics, brownfield topics, the whole rage of environmentally pertinent topics are here, so you could maybe find something that interests you and take advantage of that and find an online community that way. Let's move to Slide 16.
Now, for the real meat, read all about it, in these notes, this is a quarterly newsletter on watershed topics published by the-[indiscernible] branch of EPA Office of Water and the newsletter is valuable I find because it shows you the meat of projects. It shows you how people got things done, innovative funding techniques they used all about some cutting edge research, for example, I found out about a center that's evaluating low impact development techniques for their effectiveness at the University of New Hampshire through an article in news notes, so we are in really good hands when it comes to getting the nations news on watersheds through news notes.
Wonderful! Let's move on to the next slide, Slide 17, and I just wanted to point out that for the next few slides, I'm going to be talking about characterizing the watershed, so tools to characterize the watershed. Let's move to Slide 18. Again I remind you, this is Slide 18 now of the main steps in the clean water framework, the water quality standards, assessment, and then if they are not meeting the standards the impaired waters list.
Let's move to Slide 19. I'm going to go through national databases on EPA's web servers that have information on A) water quality standards, B) assessment, and C) impairments and TMDL's so let's move to Slide 20.
A) water quality standards. The URL is on your slide, and I'm going to show you two different things. The first thing is a database and the second thing is a repository of State water quality standards and codes. Let's move to Slide 21. When you click on database, I'm going to show you some quick and dirty reporting that you can get from this database. Base. Eled reports on the left-hand side because I would click on reports and when you move to Slide 22, you'll see what you get when you click on reports.
I'm going to get a report on designated use and water body data by State because I want to figure out what is a particular water body's designated use? Now, further down on that same page, you'll see what is on Slide 23. Let's click on Slide 23. This is an interactive map where you would pick a State from which you want to find a water body and its designated use. In this case, I click on the State of Utah which I've circled. So let's move to Slide 23.
In Utah, you have to pick the water body. There's a couple ways to do that. You could type the name of the water body and do a match such as exact match or containing, or what I did is the easier way is just to pick the water body from a pick list of all water bodies in the State, and then I click on the Run Report put done. What do I see? Well, look on Slide 25. Uh-huh, I get a table of information. This table is pulled, it's the report out from the National database.
What am I seeing in this table because reading these results is really key to understanding what EPA is serving up, the information that it's serving up. First of all, I see three rows, that means what? Well if you look under water body entity ID, it's the same code, it's the same water body that I picked from that pick list, so they aren't three separate water bodies. In fact, there are three separate deingz iing Nateed uses and if you can read, they are agriculture, cold water, aquatic life and secondary recreation, so the water body I picked has three designated uses.
Now, if I clicked on the hyperlink on that code under water body entity ID, that's just a unique identifyer in a geographic information system and if I clicked on it I would launch an application called enviromapper for water which actually displays where this water body is within the State of Utah and there's that little boy with the globe to show you that it goes to AGIS. Well, I'm not going to do that yet. We're going to continue our investigation of these national databases.
The second part of reporting from the water quality standards page is the repository of State, tribal, and territorial standards. Again, a common thing, interactive map. Select a State to view the State's documents and codes. I selected North Carolina. Let's move now to Slide 27.
When I picked North Cairo lane a from that interactive map on Slide 26, this is the result that I got and that's what you're seeing on Slide 27. This has the full documentation, full State codes of all the designated uses in the State, use classifications, as well as those critical numbers, the criteria, numeric criteria and numeric criteria applicable to particular class waters or designated waters. That's what I know a lot of you are interested.
So you can investigate water quality standards more deeply this way. Let's move to Slide 28. Oh, this is where Don steps in again.
Thank you for that, Ann, Sue. We're going to pause briefly to take questions and again, you can submit questions at any time online by clicking on the question mark button at the top of the slides page. And we will get to the phones in a minute, but we do have a couple questions that came online. Or at least one. And this one, the question is: How have citizen groups been added, I presume, to the adopt your watershed database? How has this been publicized and here to answer the question is also in with us, Ann Weinberg, of EPA assessment watershed protection division.
Good afternoon, or good morning depending on where you are. This question relates to the adopt your watershed database that Ann Sue mentioned. This is one of the pieces of information that you can get if you write in your watershed and surf. You get to the watersheds that are listed in the adopt your watershed database and the question relates to how can you actually add your citizen's group to the database? That is very easy to do, if you go to www.EPA.gov/adopt. And spelled just the way the word sounds. So, there is a place there that you can go on right on that page to add your watershed group, and think are currently about 4,000 watershed groups in this database and we would love for you to add your group.
The questioner also asked about how do we publicly size this and we do publicly size thatURL, which we've made easy to remember, and we have a little flier that we put out and encourage people to join the database and we publicly size it throughout our various list servers the Ann Sue mentioned. Thank you.
It's not to say that we shouldn't explore other avenues to publicly size adopt your watershed as well. At this point we are going to unmute the lines and if you have any questions we are going to ask you to unmute your line and speak up, introduce yourself, give your first name and where you're calling in from.
My name is Mary and I'm calling from Dayton, Ohio. How up-to-date are these databases? Who is maintaining them? Is it current information?
The question, I couldn't hear your name at the start.
Mary Guken.
Your question of how up-to-date are these - [indiscernible]. There is actually a business process flow where often it's the states or local entities that are gathering the data and they go to local EPA region. The region aproves the data, examines data, works with the State to reconcile that information. It then is moved up to EPA headquarters and then made available through the website, so during this long business process, understand aboutly different regions, different states may have some issues that are not reconciled and while those remain not reconciled that information is not public so it varies really. Some states have more recent data. Some states have older data, depending on her they are in that process.
We are going to take another question or two I think, but right now, everybody is on muted from our side of things , because there seems to be people with some streaming music in the background so we'll ask you to please be aware if that's you, please cease and now we're going to try this again. Please speak up with your first name and where you are calling in from.
Okay, I guess we have no more questions. I guess we have no more questions so we'll go back to the presentation at this point.
Thank you, Don. Let's move to Slide 29, please. Slide 29. The second part of that clean water framework was the assessment information, and this is where states are monitoring and assessing whether their water bodies are meeting their designated uses and meeting their water quality standards so there's a URL, and I want to point out that not only is the information being made publicly available but there's usually always some guidance on the database, okay? Guidance on the terms used in the database, so that's why I circled the " About this database link" and when you click on that, you'll see the definitions that this website and this database uses for terms like impaired and threatened, as well as some of the report headings you're likely to see.
So, let's move to Slide 30. Further down on that same URL, you're going to see your familiar clickable map, so you can pick the State that you want to get assessment information from. In this case, I selected the State of Massachusetts. Lets move down to Slide 31. Now, the water body information here is organized by water body type, so you have assessment information for one, Rivers, streams and creeks and two, lakes ponds and reservoirs, and three, bays and estuaries and in this case, just as an example, I'm going to focus in on bays. I also want to point out here that you have assessment of waters by watershed within the State. But first of all, I'm going to get a quick look on the report from the State on bays and estuaries. Let's move down to Slide 32.
Here is a table in the background now and the individual use support for bays and this is a summary of all the bays and estuary water bodies that have been assessed and sort of summarized in this table. Now, think are four designated uses, fish, shellfish and wildlife protection, recreation, aquatic life harvesting and aesthetic value, but the third one, aquatic life harvesting is in trouble. Look on the right hand side. You can see that it says about 90% of the assessed waters are impaired for that use. So, quick snap shot of bays and estuaries in Massachusetts from 2002. Further down on the page I also have some other summaries including what are the top cause top causes ofmentes in bays and estuaries and I'll see patdz O agains, toxics, priority organics, these are large classification groupings of polution.
Let's move to Slide 33. I had pointed out earlier that you could get the summaries by watershed, when I clicked on that I'm going to select whichever watershed I want, for example, I could select the Blacksmith stone watershed and within the Blacksmith stone watershed I could pick a particular segment of water, a particular water body and that's where I've circled on the left the particular water name I'm interested. Let's move ahead to Slide 34.
For that selected water body within the Blacksmith stone watershed, in this case it's a 3.7 mile section of the Blacksmith stone River, I get another more detailed summary of assessment information. I get all of the designated uses of that segment as well as whether they are supporting their use or not. Their attainment status and I also get the primary causes of impairment. Now, as a bonus I'm able to click on the map graphic which is displayed on this page and launch an interactive map of a water session. I'm not going to show you that just this minute because we will do a more detailed examination of it latter.
Let's move ahead to Slide 35. The earlier question asked was about the currency of the data and I understand, you know, knowing that some of this data is not from 2007 or 2006, you'd want to compliment the data available through EPA's national databases with the more in depth State available information where they provided on their own websites and that varies across states. So on the same page, the summary for Massachusetts, you can link to the State, 305-B water qualita saysment reports and I'm just showing you a snap shot from the Massachusetts website of their individual water qualita saysment reports that were done on a rotation all basis and by water base in.
Let's go ahead and move to Slide 36, shifting gears now to that third part of the clean water framework, the impaired waters and total maximum daily load study. Here is the URL. And this is what you see on the web page when you go there. Again, some metadata about this database on the left-hand side, the intro to TMDL's page is a good one just to learn about the process of impairment listing and TMDL's what is involved, but also, a direct link on the right hand side to archived audio Webcast, similar to the one that you're listening to now, except this one is archived, and it's all about TMDL's including the process and what's involved, it's called the ABC's of TMDL's for stakeholders.
now I think you're going to be quite experts at navigating around the country. This familiar clickable map again shows up and I'm going to show you an example of the type of information I can quickly extract on impaired waters by zooming into the State of Virginia. I clicked on the State of Virginia. Let's move ahead to Slide 37.
Okay, so when I clicked on the State of Virginia, I'm going to get a summary of impairment information reported by the State, okay? This particular summary lists the top causes of impairment in the State. The top by far is the class of pollutants under pathogens and on the right hand side next to the bar graph, it gives me a number which is hyperlinked, 605. So 605 water bodies have been assessed as not meeting their water quality standards and the cause of that impairment is a pathogen-type pollutant.
Let's move on to Slide 38, for what happens when I click on that hyperlinked number next to the pathogens bar graph. So here is my full listing of all of the water bodies with pathogen impairments. It's an alphabet it call listing but in addition it gives me which State base in the water body is in and when the water body was listed. Now, these are listed on a by annual basis on a two year basis so you can see which years they were listed.
Also, some of these water bodies have GIS information associated with them so they can be mapped in enviromapper for water.
Let's move on to Slide 39. This is a second example of what I might get in ferm terms of a summary impairment reported by the State. Here are all of the waters listed by watershed in the State. You know, I had initially started with the middle Potomac watershed when I showed you surf your watershed so I'm going to choose a different one this time and it's a base in and on the right hand side it gives me the number of waters in that base in that are on the impaired waters list. It's actually 23.
Let's move to Slide 40. When I drilled down to that particular basin I can get individual water body segments that are impaired or I could view this information on an interactive Enviromapper for water. Let's move on to Slide 41 to look at what would happen if I clicked on waters listed by water body.
So I've chosen a particular segment from this watershed. It's the lower Anacosta River and I get more detailed information. I can see that it was reported in 2004, most recently. I can see the actual impairment as well as the class of impairments and this is prioritized very highly, so TMDL's have been done.
Let's move down to Slide 42 which shows me more about the TMDL's for these high priority pollutants. Here we are, just same page when I zoomed in I've drilled down to that particular segment in the Anacosta watershed, and this is a listing of the actual TMDL's, this is the TMDL document name when it was established and for which pollutant a TMDL was done so you can see all of this quick reporting just by drilling down through that website. Okay?
Let's go ahead and move to Slide 43. Now, so far, I've shown you three separate databases, the water quat it standards, assessment, and impairment. Now, now waters is an information system that EPA has built to integrate different water program databases, so that now, you don't just have to limit data extractions and reporting to one database. You can get information that's cross reported, that you can answer questions that involve more than one database, because the information is cross-listed and able to be integrated through this information system.
Well, how do you do that? Waters offers tools. I've highlighted Tools on the slide at the bottom there. So let's move to Slide 44. When you go to the website for tools by clicking on tools there, a number of tools are listed and I'm going to show you two today, ask waters and Enviromapper for water. Now, these tools will help you generate reports for multiple databases at once and Enviromapper for water will help you visualize this water body information on a map because really all watershed information is location all in nature. It's best viewed on a map.
Let's move to Slide 45. Ask waters. Now, this little thing looks like he's asking to be excused and I don't think you can ask waters to be excused but you can certainly ask waters multi-program questions, and I'm going to do that today through a very simple query and that's why I've highlighted the simple query option there on that page. Let's move to Slide 46.
These are some preset questions that people ask typically from EPA but that involve examining multiple databases, so the preset questions on the left and then the associated programs on the right. For example, the question that I wanted to focus on was about de listing. What waters have been delisted, and what were the causes of impairments and what were their reasons for delisting, and that involves the TMDL database, the national TMDL tracking system database and the 303-D list. Multiple database and if I want to point out too, that web page has many more questions so let's move to Slide 47 to see the result of what happens when I click on one of those preset questions.
I get a dialogue box so to speak where I have to pick a State. If I don't pick a State or region, I'm going to run this report for the entire, answer the question for the entire nation, but I'll just do it for Michigan. I also specify a date range. I want to see everything that's been delisted from January 2005 to January 2007 and I click on Run Report.
Let's move ahead to Slide 48. Here is the results. It's a table of information that gives me, let's have a look. What does it give me? It gives me the date that the EPA de listed a particular water, the State, the region of course, the actual water body name. Now this is in alphabet it call list, and it gives me the list ID which is the geographical information system unique identifyer, and it gives me the cause, the cause of impairment now as well as on the very right hand side, the reason for delisting. So it's a very elegant quick report that can help you sort of gauge what's going on in terms of impaired waters in Michigan or whatever State you want. So let's move ahead to Slide 49.
I've been teasing you with Enviromapper all this while and now we're finally here. So what can Enviromapper do for you? Well, this integrated reporting can be done visually, on a map, and that's really the power of Enviromapper, but I also want to point out, before you start, you may want to check out the video demo that's online there as well as the training exercise which really gives you some good tips in addition to this Webcast, you'll want something on hand that will take you through an example and that's a good way to do it. Let's move to Slide 49.
So, Oh, we are on Slide 49. Well, I lied. On Slide 49 let me point out that you would have to click on the graphic there, that map graphic to launch Enviromapper for water properly and you'll see on Slide 50, wow! Oval festival. No, you don't see those again, I'm just putting that into point things out but this is the basic interface of Enviro mapper that I'm going to point out a couple things, the map view first of all. Right in the middle is the map view. The green oval there circles the Help button. Now, people are using schlafari and Fire Fox and other browsers at home. I'm not sure how you're viewing this, but because of the variability and browsers, you may want to look at that help first before you start Enviromapper for water because this is is a software application built for certain specifications and we want to make sure that it functions correctly, so check your specifications first. Because it's built on a certain platform and so fourth.
Below the map view is sort of a red oval and that is the message area and that's really critical for when we do those interactive queries. On the right hand side are all of the map tools and you should be familiar with them from using other internet mapping applications where you can and you zoom in and you pan and you know pick a particular feature on the map and so fourth. On the left-hand side are the map features or data layers, and this is what is mapped in the map view. Now, currently, there's a check next to the word " States" and I'm sorry this is very small. Perhaps you can't see it on your screen but the checkbox is checked for " States" and that's why you're seeing State boundaries in the map view.
Let's move to Slide 51 which is simply scrolling down on that same main interface for Enviromapper for water and this shows you, this is a sort of a navigation tool for Enviromap per for water. There are multiple ways to zoom into a watershed that you're interested. Now, you've already figured out your eight digit HUK from su rf your watershed, so you could select the radio button next to hydrologic cataloging unit within the State of, pick your State and then pick from a pick list of HUK codes but here I'm just going to use county, it's a really easy way to zoom in. So, I pick county, I pick a State and click on zoom to selected area which gives me a pick list of counties and when I pick the particular county, now I've selected Fleming County in the State of Kentucky and what I see is going to be on Slide 52.
The map redraws zoomed in on the County of Fleming in Kentucky. I want you to notice that the map scale is actually 29 miles wide. That's given for you underneath the map view, and on the left-hand side, there are, you should notice more data layers available now that I'm at this zoom scale, so the map features change with map scale and that's really critical, and as you zoom in, you may get more data layers available because they are just more meaningful to map at this scale.
On the right hand side are the tools and I'm going to use the zoom tool. To use a tool, you have to select the radio button. You have to click on the toggle button next to the hyperlinked word. If you click on the hyperlinked word " Zoom" you're going to get an explanation of what zoom does, so click on the radio button and then your mouse will turn into a selector hand and what I'm Doing is going up to the town of Flemingburg and click on it so on Slide 53, please, you'll see the result. The map redraws because it is zoomed in around the town of F lemingburg, and now, immediately point out, the map scale is now only seven miles wide. I'm zoomed in. As long as my zoom scale is below 25 miles wide, I can see really key feature of Enviromapper for water and that is the data set, the map feature called surface waters. Surface waters is really the national geography data set and it's only visible at map view scales that are less than 25 miles and that is turned on for me by default when I zoom in , okay?
Now, I've also got the streets on there and I'm more interested the waters so what am I going to do? Let's move on to Slide 54. What I'm going to do is uncheck the display checkbox for streets and below surface waters, there's that data layer called impaired waters. I'm check that, so that means turn on the impaired waters. I checked that display checkbox. Now, I'm still not going to see any results in my map view because I need to do a third step which is very important which is to update the map.
Once I've turned on and off my data layers and then updated my maps, I'm going to see a result. Now let's quickly move to Slide 55, but I wanted to point out that in your typical internet map application, you can not only see maps displayed, you can actually pick a point and get a pop-up box with more information about that point.
For example, this is a point that's a shop, it's got the street address, it's got the phone number, that's just more in depth information about a point on a map and that's really querying some back end database and this is exactly the same principle that Enviromapper for water will use. Let's move to Slide 56 to see how.
When we redid the map, we had turned on the impaired waters layer, and turned off the streets so now you're just focusing on the waters. I'm going to use a new tool on the right called the Identify Active Feature Tool. I turned the radio button on, and my mouse becomes a select or hand and I select an impaired water. I forgot to tell you one key thing and you will find that out when you try it if you follow my exact instructions. That is very important thing. I want to emphasize this. On the left-hand side where I've checked the display checkbox, well, just to the right of it is a radio button. I have to make that the active layer, impaired waters is the active data layer which means it's the only data layer that's active and any operation that I do with the tools on the map view will only be on impaired waters.
So, I can get good results as long as I've selected the active data layer to be impaired waters, okay? So you have to click the radio button to make that feature active and then, you can do what I just told you, identify active feature tool, and select in the map view your feature tool. What happens? Let's look on Slide 57 what happens.
The map view shows the selected feature highlighted in yellow but below in the map message area, it's called a message area, you'll see that similar information that you would get in a pop-up box in your typical internet map application. This information is bundled for you. The first thing you'll see is that impaired waters information for that selected segment, and it's hyperlinked and the hyperlink gives you that water body ID.
Now, as a bonus what Enviromapper for water does is it pulls other information from other databases if they are geographically referenced to that segment that you picked, so in this case, it looks like there's also water quality standards information for that same segment. I could click on any of these hyperlinks and get some more information, and that's what I'm going to do next so we'll click on Slide 58. Move on to Slide 58.
I'm going to, what I'm doing here is just clicking on the impaired waters hyperlink. That's all I'm doing here. I just want to show you what happens when I click on the impaired waters hyperlink. Let's move on to Slide 59. A pop-up box opens with information reported from the impaired waters database. And let's have a look at some of the information. I can get the English name, I've got the water body entity ID , that's the GIS unique identifyer but I've got the English name, called Fleming Creek, I can get the history of the listing and I can also get the reason for impairment which is why it's impaired.
Let's move to Slide 60. I told you as a bonus, other information referenced to that same segment is available for you when I clicked on the water quality standards hyperlink, I opened another pop-up box with information from the water quality standards database, and here, yes, it's Fleming Creek, the same creek and it shows me in fact that I have three designated uses for this creek. Okay?
Let's move on to Slide 61. Now, so far, we've been looking at water body information. What about point sources? That's critical in watershed planning. These are industries, facilities that have been permitted by a permitting agency be it the State or EPA to discharge affluent into the waters of the United States. Let's have a look at point sources.
They are a bundled data layer, so if you would click on the arrow next to the word " Facilities" you will unroll all of the individual databases that have point data and you'll see there are super fund sites, toxic release sites, hazardous waste sites as well as discharges to water. So the discharges to water come from the permit compliance system database.
What I've done is I've checked the checkbox under display, so I'm going to turn that on but also, I've made it the active of data layer by clicking on the radio button next to discharges to water, critical step to do.
Then, I use the identify active feature tool which is the oval on the right hand side of the map view, and I make that the active tool and use my pointer finger and I select one of the points on the map. Let's move to Slide 62 for the results.
Same as the other time when we selected the water body, the point is highlighted on the map in a yellow cross. It's also labelled Flemingburg Wastewater Treatment Plant and that information is hyperlinked below in the message area. If I would click on that hyperlink, I would be able to pull that data and see it in a pop-up box from that back end database which is the permit compliance system database so let's have a look at what that looks like on Slide 63.
Okay, so here again, a part of this exercise is just learning to read what the on the page. This is basically some overview information about the permit issued to that particular facility, the facility name is Fle mingburg Water Treatment plant and it's not a national Pollutant Discharge Elimination System ID prefaced with the State abbreviation KY, and it's also got some other overview information such as the date of ush using the permit and the expiration date and so fourth.
If you were to click on that hyperlinked permit number, you would get more detailed reports. Well look at that, on Slide 64. And actually, this is an over of view of all the detailed reports you can get so you'd have to pick one of the reports to look at, and I'm just going to pick one, so I would un check everything that I didn't want to see and keep the one check that I did want to see which is measurements and violations and this basically shows you all the parameters that the facility is required by permit to continue to monitor and report. It's got to meet some permit limits and so fourth.
Let's move on to Slide 65 to see what that measurements and violations report would look like. Again, take some time to read what's going on on the page. The first thing you'll see is an example parameter, such as P H as well as the measurements that have been reported and their date of reporting. There's also a measurement violation code field which shows you is that measurement a violation, it could be a reporting violation or it could actually be a numeric violation which means that it's floating its permit. That information is publicly available and you can have access to it this way. If you wanted to find another parameter you would just scroll down the page or you could also use the browsers Find utility under Edit on the menu typically to find a particular parameter you're interested so I've just put that there to show you.
Lets move to Slide 66. Don?
Thank you, Ann, Sue. We'll break here for more questions now. Remember, you can submit your questions at any time online by clicking on the question mark button at the top of each slide's page. And we will be getting to the phones here shortly, but we do have a number of e-mail questions first and the first one is actually going to be answered by Ann Weingerg of EPA, and this is from Nicole from Michigan. Will Michigan be added to the water quality standards database in the future and we had a very similar question to that about from Georgia, from Tom in Georgia, and wanting to know how these databases are maintained and how insert your State name here, can be included in the next update?
Well, thank you, Don. We are getting as Don mentioned a number of questions about why particular sites like Michigan or Georgia are not included in the water quality standards database, and as I understand, it's the intention of EPA to add all of the water quality standards information to the database. If you have questions about your particular State and the timing of when the database will be added, I urge you, you can send an e-mail to the following address: Kqs clearing houses@EPA.gov. That would be WQSclearinghouses@EPA.gov, and that e-mail is actually at the top of the water quality standards page and actually, that's a good thing maybe to point out that all of our databases, we have e-mails that at the top of like the water quality standards database and other databases, there's at the very top, it always says kop can tact Us and so you can find the correct e-mail for a particular database and send a question in. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Ann. And we have an excellent question here from Joseph in LA. Who wants to know about the water qualita saysmentes, who did them, are they objective and consistent throughout across the U.S? Are the assessments done by the states and I can go ahead and take the first stab at this. Yes, for better, for worse, they are the domain of the states, so beyond that, Ann or Ann Sue, would you like to add anything? Here is Ann.
Well that's right, Don. The states, territories and tribes generally they are the ones that do the assessments. These assessments determine whether water bodies are impaired or threatened or not and this is the first we refer to as the listing process, and then if a water body is impaired it gets on the so-called TMDL list.
States develop assessment methodologies and these methodologies do vary by State, so that was a good question. Anything to add, Ann Sue?
Not really, except Ann, I did point out on each State's assessment roll up, there is a link to that State's website and it's on assessments on its 305-B process, so when you go out on the internet after this Webcast and look, you'd probably follow those thing links to find the states own information, and you may actually get more recent information than what they've submitted to EPA's national databases. As I said, there's a long business process flow in uploading that data up into these national databases and made available to the public.
I'll give it back to Don in case there are questions on the phone.
Okay and just to add to what they said, it's worth noting that there is EPA over sight on the State assessments so EPA isn't completely out of the loop on this. At this point we are going to try to take some phone calls, so please unmute yourself, introduce yourself, and where you're calling in from.
Okay, I think we're set now.
Go ahead, anyone, with any questions?
Last call for questions? Hearing none, we will continue on the next slide.
Thank you, Don. So everyone should be on Slide . And here, I am basically back in Enviromapper for water because one of the key things that watershed groups is looking for is water quality monitoring data, what's the history of certain parameters, in a particular water body and that too is accessible from Enviromapper for water so I'll show you how you can get that information.
There's a data layer on the left-hand side, a map feature called water quality stations. You can, it's a bundled layer and you can signified, you can see it's bundled because it has a little arrow next to it which you can click to unroll it. There are two selections under water quality stations. One is Storet and it has water quality monitoring data after 1999 so you would check the display checkbox to turn on Stor et station sites, and you would also make it the active data layer, a key step by clicking on that radio button next to it.
You may not see water quality monitoring station at your location or where you're interested, so you might have to zoom out just a little bit or pan to see where these stations are, because they may not be monitoring right where you would like them to be monitoring or there may not be a history of monitoring where you'd like it.
Now, in this case, you'll see, I'm a little West of the town of Fleminggerg and I did In fact find a Storet station there so this is a very I suppose you could say it's limited because you're looking at one particular place, you zoomed into one particular place.
I found the station, and so I'm going to do what I did before. I'm going to use the identify active feature tool by selecting the radio button next to it and my mouse changes to a pointer hand and I click on that station, all right? What happens when I move down to Slide 68, you'll see.
That particular station is highlighted and any of the information linked to that station is brought for me in that message area below the map view. I want to point out that that's a point in space. That's a physical latitude, longitude location. Multiple organizations may be conducting sampling at that point. Those organizations are individually identified in the Store t data. In this case, it's only one organization that's sampling at that point, but it need not always be.
So, you know, you could drill down to get actual water quality monitoring data values from any of the organizations that are sampling at that physical location. I'm going to click on the hyperlink in the message area for L -25 which happens to be that particular organization and we'll move to Slide 69 to see what happens.
On 69, you'll see what I get is basically a summary of all of the available data from that organization monitoring at that site. The organization's name is northern Kentucky University and on the left, I see a listing of all the parameters that are monitored at the station as well as how many results for each parameter and the date range of monitoring. Now, one important terminology clarification. I tend to talk about parameters as parameters but they're called characteristics in Storet, so parameters equals characteristics and I'll stop myself from saying that from now on and go to characteristics.
Let's move on to cap slide 70. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to click on any of those hyperlinked parameters such as dissolved oxygen, precipitation, any of the parameters monitored at the station and when I do, I move to Slide 70 and I get the Stor et interface, and what I will do is I'll show you how to start from the Storet main page. We're accessing data monitor through the map, but this is exactly what you would see when you, if you were to start from the start main page. It's the same data interface, except that your map based selection has passed certain details already and filled in details already in this interface.
For example, it's already chosen for you the organization, Northern Kentucky University, and it's already chosen for you that particular location. Let's move down to Slide 71 which is just simply scrolling down that same interface page, and because I had picked dissolved oxygen from the summary, it's already put in for me the characteristic that I'm interested is the dissolved oxygen.
However, at this point, I could use that characteristic search box to add additional characteristics, and when I hit continue, I would receive a data file prepared by Storet in my e-mail so that's kind of a nice elegant way that they package the data you and you have chosen a site through the map and you're getting water quality monitoring data.
Let's move to Slide 72. As promised, what if you don't want to be limited one small area that your sort of investigating through a map? What if you wanted to gatdzer all of the data and then filter down what you're interested? Well you would do it through Storet 's main page. Again, Ann pointed out there are links to contact us on every database page. You could use them to get more information. I've pointed out here that there's really neat three page training exercise that takes you through Storet, so you could try that, but in this set of slides I'm going to show you how you can download data from Storet, so I would click on download data and you would do the same and we'll move to Slide 73.
This page helps you to narrow down what exactly you want to download. You could download for example, biological data. In this case, I still want to download physical and chemical result data but I want to figure out wherein the world at which sort of boundary I want to pull all the data from, so I click on regular results by geographic location so let's move to Slide 74.
Here again, I have to pick a State and a county so I picked the State of Kentucky and I click on the Look Up button and I get a pick list of counties and I select Flem ing County and I could do that. Let's move to Slide 75 and further down on the same page, a couple slides back, we looked at the same interface except we had accessed it through the map, this time we access it through EPA's main storet page. I can do a characteristic search. If I left it blank, I would get all the data within Fleming County in Kentucky but I could use the wildcard which is a percent sign in the character textbook and pull particular parameters or characteristics that I'm interested.
And everyone knows that keyboard short cut, if you would hit Control and click, you could make multiple selections; okay? Let's move to Slide 76.
In this case, I have selected three characteristics, BOD ,fecal Caliform and dissolved oxygen and when I click continue, I will now receive my file via e-mail. I have to point out right now, that storet is in the process of some evolution. It's going to develop into a new, updated system called WQX, water quality exchange, which really affects how you input data into Storet. Storet is a decentralized system. Groups around the country such as Northern Kentucky University or other watershed groups or State agencies are submitting data that they have into the central data repository, and you may do so as long as you have a documentation, a quality documentation that shows you what your instrumentation was like and what procedures were used in the sampling and it helps to explain the data. As long as that information is there, you can submit your data to EPA and it will go through a quality process and then be uploaded so that's nationally available to the public through this website.
And that process is being upgraded and that upgrade is called WQX. It also, WQX will also give you some additional reporting tools other than the ones I'm showing you here today.
So I've selected three parameters, I've selected a county in Kentucky, and when I hit continue, we'll see what happens on Slide 77. I mits start to glaze over here. But not to worry. This is just the list of fields that you can potentially pull fromthe Storet database, and to tell you the truth, the default fields really work great. They have those key things, when the activity was done, when the monitoring was done, the activity start date, there's also the activity depth, the characteristic, the particular parameter and then the value type, the statistics type, the result value as text, the units used, and also the procedure , analytical procedure, so the default fields really do work great. I would recommend starting with that and if you feel loot that you need more data, you can always come back here and look through and select other data that you need. And you hit Continue, and your file actually, this has changed slightly. You will receive the file by e-mail but it's the same file I have here and so I can show you how that looks.
You would right click this hyperlink, where it says download your file now, and you would open a text file. Let's move to Slide 79. In the background if your screen resolution permits you'll see that it's actually a tilde file, with that being the key on the top left of the keyBoard, and you can save this file as text, but then you can import it into Microsoft Excell or other spreadsheets and apply automatic filters, get what you're looking for, do some sorting and really refine what you want out of this data dump that storet gives you; okay?
So, let's move to Slide 80. So here we are, just to remind everyone, again, about the water quality of sort of Clean Water Act framework that we're working in. We've got standards information, monitoring, impaired waters , we've also got monitoring information, the actual water quality data that have been submitted by groups around the country so we can put it all together into watershed plan. Well, you're wondering does EPA have tools to help support online internet tools to help support developing a watershed plan? Let's move to Slide 81.
Yes, it does! Not to worry. EPA does have a tool. And what this tool will enable you to do is to create a customize the watershed plan outlined to get you on your way , now that you know how to use all the various tools to gatdzer all that data. In fact, next month's Webcast will be a special presentation on this new cutting edge tool. It helps you gather together in one location all the key factors and considerations that you must take into account when putting together a watershed plan, and the Webcast next month titled the Watershed Plan Builder will step you through this interactive online tool that will help you create an outline. So please be sure to tell your friends and attend this informative Webcast on April 18th, okay? We'll be using actually a more interactive Webcast service for April, so for those of you who participate regularly in our Webcast, the registration process will be slightly different than usual. Registration for the Webcast will open on April 9th on the watershed academy website.
As usual, please visit our website at EPA.gov/watershed Webcast, all one word, to register at that time. Now let's continue with today's Webcast and move to Slide 82.
So, I've got some tools now to show you in the implementation phase of your watershed planning, design and implement the program. Let's move on to Slide 83. Well, putting any plan on the road takes money. Show me the money, right? So EPA has gathered together a variety of resources that help you find funding for watershed efforts. Here is that main page that you should consider. It's got, you know, the resources for non-profit organizations here, some planning tools, the sustainable funding planning tools are very nice, you would try those, but I wanted to show you a really quick nice, interactive site which you would get if you would click on the link called " Databases" of funding opportunities, so if you click on that let's move to Slide 84.
You could access the catalog of federal funding sources for watershed protection. Now this website, right away you'll see that it's got four main categories you need to pick something in, or you might want to pick something in, and then you can get results, so you could pick type of existence you want whether it's grants or loans, you could pick yourself as what type of organization you are, whether you're a community watershed group or a tribe, and then you would pick keywords such as non-point source control or Watershed Management, and see what kind of funding programs are applicable in your case. Let's have a look at what you might get as a result and let's move to Slide 85.
Okay, in this case, I said I want to see results by table. And I've got 13 pages of information, this is just Page two of 13 and it's alphabet icily sorted and here, I've got the program name. It's hyperlinked and I've got a quick overview of the program and as well, I've got the current funding levels, okay? So if I want to get more, if one of them looks interesting and I want more information I would drill down by clicking on the hyperlink. Let's move to Slide 86.
Here are the details of the coastal program funding program, immediately, I need to know application deadline, some funding history of the program, here you go. That funding history is there, and is a match required? who do eye contact or who do I submit my application to, I've got the primary contact information there as well.
Wonderful. Let's move to Slide 87. We touched on this slide at the start at the outset. This is EPA's watershed hub and I wanted to point out this amazing collection of resources under watershed academy to help build capacity by training people on the latest techniques and the latest issues in watersheds as well as the science behind Watershed Management, including the science of pollutants and monitoring and so fourth. And why have I put a cap and gown over there? Because you can actually graduate from watershed academy. Let's move on to Slide 88 to see how.
If you complete 15 online self-paced training courses you too can be the proud displayer of an EPA water said Academy certificate and where do you get these modules? You would look on watershed Academy web, where there are more than 50 self-paced training modules on all types of watershed topics. Lets have a look at what groupings of topics there are on Slide 89.
You have watershed ecology modules, watershed change modules, Management practices and so fourth, so a number of different training opportunities available through this website. And they are very nicely laid out. You got pictures on the left-hand side, some text, very interactive, clickable learning.
Let's go ahead now to Slide 90. In terms of implementation, there's really no one size fits all solution, that a tool that we can offer, but the non- point source branch has addressed this in a very innovative way. They've looked at polution generation sources in terms of categories, such as agricultural sources of polution or urban sources of polution or Marinas and boating or forrestry, okay? So if you would click on N PS categories you'd get this subpage which lists the categories and then under each category, they give you a number of resources including techniques and Management measures on how to deal with those sources of polution. In this instance, I'm going to look at the urban category and so let's move to Slide 91.
So in the urban page, I want to point out some very nice resources, starting from the bottom. They've listed EPA smart growth page. I would really go there if you are interested growth and how it impacts water resources and how techniques and smart growth such as regional planning, transit based planning can have an effect on the imprint the urban imprint in your watershed and how that affects waters. A lot of the cutting edge research in this area has been summarized into simple, easily readable documents with great graphics that you can use to show local municipalities and counties and di decision makers at the local level where the rubber really meets the road when it comes to planning.
So EPA provides such guidance and the smart growth page is really fantastic. I would take a look there and it's across media. It's not only water, but there are air, solid waste trans r for taiingz links through that smart growth page. The second link on the page I want to highlight is the low impact development page. What can you do even at the site level to better manage water resources? And so there are a number of links there.
The link that I'm going to jump into in the Webcast today is the national Management measures to control none- point source polution from urban areas. This is what I'm going to show you on Slide 92, it's a detailed technical guidance document on best Management practices that municipalities can use in urban settings to reduce their sources of polution, whether it's through Management measures on construction sites, whether it's through better test Management in cities and in public lands. A variety of different, you know, deicing trucks, street sweeping, all of these different techniques there's a collection of detailed technical specs and issues to consider for each Management practice to help reduce polution. What's more, it's nationally applicable. We know there are cities in Minnesota that are quite different in January than cities in Southern California. Accounting for a variety of climatic conditions and a variety of different regional and ecological context in which cities are operating, this Management measures document encompasses and has gathered together guidances from states around the country on urban BMP so for your particular situation you're going to find some things in there that are of interest.
Sticking now with that local level decision-making which is so critical in how our watersheds look, let's move down to Slide 93. EPA has gathered together in one place a collection of model ordinances that help to protect local resources, so on the left-hand side you'll see all of the different links, if you're looking for ordinances on aquatic buffers, erosion and sediment control or open space development which is a technique to cluster development and leave more space undeveloped, you would want to look at the model ordinances under each of these topics, there's even ones for illicit discharges and post-construction controls.
I'm just going to select one, the open space development as an example, and you can see that on Slide 94. Here we are. You could get an overview of open space development, also called cluster development and it's just a little explanation, but as well, you can get actual ordinances from communities around the country that do have ordinances in place, so instead of reinventing the wheel, you can use some of their language, you can use their approaches and customize it for yourself so you've got some model ordinance language available for you. Okay?
So, let's move on to Slide 95, and I believe this is where island it off to Don to field more questions.
Thanks again, Ann Sue. Yes, we do have a few minutes to answer additional questions. So, let me begin with some e-mail first and then we'll try the phones and see if you guys are actually awake. The first question is: How is Storet data compiled? is it considered for the most part comprehensive? How often is it up dated? This comes from Kelly in Virginia and then there's sort of a follow-up and you guys may want to think about how you might want to answer this, the combination with this one , it looks like Storet may have more current information since it can be added by approved data collection groups who don't have to go through a long po says before adding the data, other than an initial approval. Is this a safe assumption coming from Mary in Dayton Ohio. So those are the Storet data questions. Here is your chance.
Thank you. How is Storet data compiled? Yeah, I'm not a Storet expert and I wish we had the expert in the room for you, but I have talked to Storet experts in the development of this course. The data are submitted from sites all around the country and in fact there's a whole listing of sites on Storet's data page, and it really depends what is submitted by particular organizations. How often is it up dated? I think it's on a rolling basis, but each data submission goes through a QA process at EPA and that can take some time. Their qualita insurance documents are looked over and the data have to be correctly sort of worked into the data fields which is why they are undergoing this upgrade currently and there's actually some really good information about the upgrade on Storets main page. I probably didn't point " Thought ou it's called update on WQ X water quality exchange and that really streamlines the process by which decentralized groups around the country submit data into Storet to make them more consistent and make them just pair that information a little bit better.
Is it considered comprehensive? In my experience, this is the quality of the data that's submitted by different groups. In terms of geographic coverage, you could say that it is comprehensive. You're getting data from around the country. I don't know quite how you would define comprehensive there. Now, the second part from Marie, it sounds like Storet may have more current information. Yes, you're absolutely right. There are some data collection groups who have already established their procedures that Storet, and I think they have a different vehicle than if you were just watershed group X in someplace starting to submit data, and yes that WQ X will apply to all groups now and so there will be more streamlined ways of adding data into Storet. And Ann did you want to add something?
Sure. Well, thank you, I appreciate the interest in Storet. Again, I'm not an expert but I work in the division that has responsibility for that and we continue to work in Storet and make it more accessible and useful and available to the public. Storet really actually include the two databases. It has what is called the legacy database and that database contains historical data, water quality data, dating back to the early part of the 20th Century. And data from that was collected up to the end of 1998. Storet also includes a database collected beginning in 1999 and so that is, so if you click on the Storet database, I think Ann Sue may have pointed out you can click on legacy or the regular Storet database so we do have very current information that groups around the country submit, all 50 states, territories and many jurisdictions are represented on the system.
Both of them, you know, both the legacy database are web enabled and available to the public and Ann Sue mentioned we have just instituted the new WQX data warehouse system and that is really going to help with getting data out of Storet to make it easier for users to get data out so we're doing our best to make this what I think is one of the largest environmental databases in the country, accessible to the public.
Okay, thank you, Ann, and we're going to try a couple more on line questions first. This is from Domoni que in Boston and I Think her question is about EPA's watershed funding database, online database that Ann Sue just demoed. How do we add a grant to the funding opportunities database? Is this strictly to house information on federal grants or on State grant the as well and I'll let Ann Sue take a crack at this one.
Thanks, Don. Yeah, it's actually called a catalog of federal funding sources for watershed protection, so that particular database has programs from Fish and Wildlife service and even DHHS when it's applicable to any kind of watershed work , even if it's source water protection or wastewater controls and so fourth, so I'm not sure what your funding opportunity is if it's a local one or a State one, it wouldn't be applicable but if you think it's a federal one that we're missing please e-mail me and you'll find my e-mail on the Webcast homepage and I can work with you to add that in if it's applicable. I'll take another question.
All right, Ann Sue. People want to know why Enviromapper is so slow? So here to take the phone away from an EPA employee, and have it answered by a contractor, here you go, Ann.
{LAUGHTER}. Yeah, they didn't explain that in help, did they? {LAUGHTER}. No, um, I've also found Enviromapper a bit slow. It varies by time of day, in the afternoon when there's a lot of internet traffic, it can affect the performance of En viromapper. There are also perhaps some other issues when they are doing database upgrades or something but I agree it has been sporadic. Currently, EPA is developing a new and improved version of E nviromapper and it's due to be released I think Fall 2007 and I hope that you will see some improvements in the performance but yeah, thank you for pointing that out, Steve , from New Jersey.
Okay so the short answer from EPA is, yes, we are aware of this and we are working on the problem. Here is a very specific question from Todd in Washington D.C. This refers to Slide 48, and he wants to know about the list ID. Is it linked to it -[indiscernible].
Okay, Todd, that's a good question. The question was on Slide 48, which is a listing of all the individual water bodies that were removed from Michigan impaired waters list, and we've come across that list ID in various per mutations throughout, so I wanted to take that question, so list ID or entity ID is a unique identifyer that the State designates for that segment of water body and on the slide, in the Slide 48, all of those list ID's are prefaced with MI which the State abbreviation for Michigan because the particular query I did was on Michigan, and the query that I did and the water quality standards database just the quick and dirty reporting from the State of Utah, that entity ID has the abbreviation UT within it.
The convention, the naming convention for these unique water body ID's is a little bit different from State to State, but it's a feature of the national geography data set that you have that unique entity ID and because you have that piece of data that's geographically referenced that has the unique locational information and as well as name, you know, it's Fleming Creek, it's KY XXXXX, you can reference all of the EPA's different water program information to that particular ID, that list ID or entity ID, and so that's how you can cross visualize different information, so in Enviro mapper for water when I clicked on a particular segment, I got the impaired waters information for that segment but as a bonus I was also able to get the water quality standards information linked to that segment, and I hope that clarifies that.
Okay, that will do it for the online questions. We're going to try the phones once again. So I'm hoping that the background music has been abated. At this point, please go ahead and unmute your line if you have a question and introduce yourself. Okay, I guess nobody has any questions. At this point, we do have a little bit of extra time, so Ann Sue, will you advance to Slide 96, let me draw your attention to where you can obtain speaker contact information.
If you are online, simply click on the home button at the top of your screen. You'll be returned to the seminars's homepage which has the speakers e-mail address and phone number. On the left-hand side bar is the links button which has additional resources identified by today's speakers. Also in the left-hand side bar is the feedback button. Please take a quick moment or so to submit the online feedback form as we really do consider your comments in our quest to improve our Webcasts.
This concludes today's watershed academy Webcast. We're finishing up a little early. On behalf of the entire EPA watershed academy Webcast team, I'd like to thank Ann Sue John for presenting her expertise today and of course thanks to all of you who have joined us. We did have one or two folks who said that they came in late because they had their own internal technical problems and I will remind folks that this Webcast will be archived so you can sort of catch up on what you missed if you happened to come in late.
A reminder that our next Webcast, the watershed plan builder is scheduled for April 18th, registration, again opens April 9th on the watershed academy website at www.EPA. gov/watershedWebcast. This is Don Way from EPA Washington D.C. Signing off. Have a great day, everyone.
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