Reports - WSTB

WSTB Reports

Estimating Water Use in the United States: A New Paradigm for the National Water-Use Information Program (2002)

Newsletter Article

The United States has an extensive infrastructure for withdrawing surface and groundwater for public water supply, industrial and commercial use, irrigated agriculture, livestock and domestic use, and to cool thermal power plants. The objectives of the USGS National Water-Use Information Program (NWUIP) are to quantify the nations use of water, and to develop and disseminate water-use information at local and national levels. To meet these objectives, water-use specialists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) work with state and local agencies that collect most of this data. The principal product produced by the NWUIP synthesizes county-level data in a national summary of water use every five years. These reports provide the only nationally consistent, policy-relevant information on the status and trends of water use for the country. However, the NWUIP faces many challenges. The NWUIP is the only USGS water resources program in which the Survey does not have the principal responsibility for primary data collection. Instead, the USGS relies on data of mixed quality, collected by many different organizations. For many of these data sources, the Survey can neither modify nor control the quality and accuracy of these data. The NWUIP is funded through National Water-Use Information Program, which requires matching funds from state cooperators. These funds are generally unavailable in states making little effort to collect water-use data. It is therefore not surprising that the quality of water-use data varies considerably from state to state. This 2002 report from the WSTB made five recommendations for the NWUIP, as follows: 1) The NWUIP should be elevated to a water-use science program, emphasizing applied research and techniques development. The program is presently viewed by some as data collection and database management program; 2) It should synthesize the many available state and national water-use datasets and couple them to GIS technology. Detailed site-specific databases exist for over 20 states, and national databases also exist for some, though not all, water-use categories; 3) Water-use estimation techniques should be further developed. The accuracy and confidence limits of water-use estimates, which must vary greatly from state to state, are presently not quantified; 4) The NWUIP should assist in the development of integrative water-use science. Examples include integrating water use with water flow and quality to develop a total picture of water moving through the landscape, and integrating ecological uses of water within streams and aquifers as a component of water use, and 5) Finally, NWUIP should seek funding from Congress for a national component of the NWUIP.
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