Lack of Water Data Hinders Management in the US

What once looked like an inexhaustible resource now seems to be drying up – but no one knows for sure because the data measuring current use is woefully outdated, imprecise and fractured.

The U.S. Geological Survey analyzes the nation’s water use, but the data is released at painfully slow intervals and with sizable gaps. The 2010 data, for example, was released in a 2014 report.

Part of the problem is that the agency relies almost solely on data submitted by state – some of which can be hard to pin down. Figuring out groundwater withdrawals from high-capacity wells in Wisconsin, for instance, can come down to guessing how much water a herd of dairy cows might drink.

The other issue is that the federal government has never put a priority on water data. In 2003, the Government Accountability Office noted that national water availability and use had “not been comprehensively assessed in more than 30 years.”

That’s a big policy problem, said Charles Fishman, a water policy expert and author of “The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water.” He calls the federal water data system “ridiculously primitive.”

“We are facing a whole set of very important and very expensive water problems: what systems to repair and replace, what technology to use, which water users to tap for help and to pay for what needs to be done, even what problems to tackle most urgently,” he said. “We make decisions about water every day using old information or deeply inadequate information or even using educated guesses. That’s irresponsible and unnecessary.”

Lawmakers have sought to change the situation. The Science and Engineering to Comprehensively Understand and Responsibly Enhance (SECURE) Water Act of 2009 endeavored to update the landscape of water data in the U.S. Guided by the law and the $12 million it promised to the agency, USGS officials launched a program that is among the biggest efforts to improve water data in the country’s history.

The agency created the Water Use Data and Research program and last year doled out $26,000 per state to help officials write plans for improving their water data. Drafts were due in June.

Scaling up water data collection means overcoming some serious technology hurdles. David Blodgett, a civil engineer and project coordinator at USGS’ Center for Integrated Data Analytics, explained what the government is contending with now.

“Our data challenges are largely around privacy and trust with use of furnished data,” he said. “Another significant issue is around compatibility and interpretation of information that can inform a water-use estimate but requires some level of integration or interpretation to be meaningful. Normalizing these kinds of data across the country is a huge task that is, necessarily, a manual effort.”

No state is perfect

Because USGS relies almost entirely on state data for its water reports,  the agency’s effort to improve data collection has focused, in large part, on improving what happens in the states.

Melinda Dalton, a staff scientist at USGS, is one of the staffers who will wade through the work plans states have formulated to improve their sometimes antiquated data systems.

“Some states collect [data] digitally, but they only collect data for certain categories,” Dalton said. “No state is the perfect example of everything.”

For the draft plans, states were asked to outline the status of their water-use programs, including the information they collect, the scale at which it is collected and the frequency of reporting. They also defined their priorities for improving their activities, whether through better data collection or new methods of estimating water use.

However, resources vary from state to state, according to Dalton.

“There are some states that put a lot of resources toward water-use data collection,” she said. “It depends on how much water they have, how many people and what the competition over resources [is]. A lot of times they are limited by legislation: They collect some things, and they can’t collect others. You sometimes see a change in collection activities when water is becoming more scarce during times of drought.”

Furthermore, some states lack the technological readiness to run a sophisticated water data program.

“Some of them talked about how they are still collecting information on paper,” she said. “They’d like to do it electronically. We’d like to be able to report data as often as we can. That’s our long-term goal. We get our data from the states. We can’t report on use as often as we would like to. If states are still collecting data on paper, it creates a timing issue.”

A vision of the future

At USGS, Dalton can imagine a future when the federal government has a clearer picture of water use. The goal is getting “an idea of water use on a monthly timestamp, but that’s many years down the road,” she said.

It would require significant improvements to data collection and estimation techniques, but states seem keen on improving their water data, she added.

“The response has been overwhelming,” Dalton said. “States are very eager. The response to the program has been phenomenal.”

As part of the program, USGS organized stakeholder meetings and conference calls to connect teams from around the country. The agency will continue making grants, now on the basis of merit, in the coming years. More than 40 states applied for federal money to write their work plans, and dozens of state aides join the USGS conference calls.

“One of the things we heard was that there’s not really an outlet for state water-use people to talk about water use and the work they do,” Dalton said.

Fishman said he imagines even bigger possibilities for federal water data. He said the government could develop a water version of the Energy Information Administration, which was created during the 1970s energy crisis.

“The goal is simple: We need to get the most out of the water we have available, at the most reasonable cost,” Fishman said. “We can’t possibly do that without information about who is using water and how much they’re using every day.”

Read full article at: GCN