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Data Elements for Reporting Water Quality Results of Chemical and Microbiological Analytes
Note: EPA no longer updates this information, but it may be useful as a reference or resource.
[Federal Register: March 16, 2001 (Volume 66, Number 52)]
[Notices]
[Page 15273-15275]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr16mr01-53]
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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Geological Survey
Data Elements for Reporting Water Quality Results of Chemical and
Microbiological Analytes
AGENCY: U.S. Geological Survey, Interior.
ACTION: Notice of availability and request for comments.
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SUMMARY: Notice of availability is hereby given for a 45-day public
comment period on the proposed set of Data Elements for Reporting Water
Quality Results of Chemical and Microbiological Analytes developed by
the National Water Quality Monitoring Council. The Council prepared
this critical core set of data elements to facilitate the sharing of
chemical and microbiological water quality data and promote efficiency
in the monitoring of water resource quality programs. The Council will
hold public meetings to take public comment on this proposal at four
locations. The suggested audiences for this proposal include program
managers responsible for developing and using water quality data,
researchers, data analysts, and database managers in the public and
private sectors and the general public with interests in development
and use of water quality data.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Background
Water quality monitoring is an increasingly important element of
water quality management activities. It provides information for an
accurate understanding of the conditions of waters and the trends in
observed water quality. Water quality must be understood in order that
valid and effective restoration and protection programs can be designed
for waterbodies that vary significantly in their vulnerability and
pollution stress. Because of the cost of its collection, water quality
data must be viewed as a resource worthy of careful management both to
preserve it for future analyses by the agency that collects it and to
share it among local, state, and federal agencies, and the private
sector involved in resource management activities.
The National Water Quality Monitoring Council has identified the
standardization of water quality data elements as important in the
preservation and use of data and is proposing today a list of data
elements that offer both definitions of each element and lists of
related groups of elements needed to provide a complete picture of the
sampling and analytic activity. In 1995, the predecessor organization
to the Council, the Intergovernmental Task Force on Monitoring Water
Quality (ITFM), identified the need for a set of minimum data elements
to facilitate sharing and exchange of information (ITFM, 1995a). The
ITFM also developed a recommended list of data elements for use in
establishing new, or modernizing existing, databases, which served as
the starting point for today's proposal (ITFM, 1995b). This list is
expected to influence the collection of water quality data by federal,
state, and local agencies; academic institutions; the private sector;
and citizens who volunteer their efforts. These are the groups that
together collect the majority of ambient water quality data in the
country.
The core set of Data Elements for Reporting Water Quality Results
of Chemical and Microbiological Analytes is expected to be presented to
the Advisory Committee on Water Information at its May 2001 meeting and
to be available to the U.S.
[[Page 15274]]
Environmental Protection Agency for consideration as one of the growing
list of data standards it is adopting, as well as for voluntary use by
other local, state and federal agencies and the private sector.
In the future, the National Water Quality Monitoring Council is
planning to develop data elements to address higher level biological
indicators of water and habitat quality for ecological analysis. The
Council has concurrent efforts to foster more consistent analytic
techniques and more widespread information sharing as a means of
reducing costs and increasing the data available for decisions.
II. Proposal
The Council believes that by proposing a core set of data elements,
agencies collecting water quality data will be spared the task of
creating their own systems for organizing metadata and their own set of
definitions of the metadata elements. When implemented, a standard set
of data elements will spare all data users the complex task of
reconciling diverse metadata systems as they draw on multiple data sets
to carry out their studies or analyses. The Council believes that the
standardization inherent in the use of standard data elements holds the
prospect of reducing costly duplicate monitoring efforts.
These data elements are proposed as guidelines to define a measure
of good practice within the water quality monitoring community. They
will encourage greater data consistency, allow the quality of data to
be determined by future users, and simplify the process for all who
choose to enter these metadata elements. It is not required that all
the proposed data elements be used. Metadata selected must fit the data
they describe. Sampling data from ground water, for instance, is
described by several metadata elements that are of no use for surface
water samples. Therefore, the Council does not intend to require anyone
to provide all of the proposed elements in order for data to be entered
in a federally maintained database. The Council's advocacy of these
data elements is not intended to discourage the use of existing water
quality data solely because it does not meet these guidelines.
The core set of Data Elements for Reporting Water Quality Results
of Chemical and Microbiological Analytes cover wells, surface water
stations, and precipitation. This list is intended to standardize the
preservation of data and to facilitate its sharing by standardizing
definitions and by defining the list of data, metadata and their
descriptive definitions. A data element is the name of a set of
information with the same attribute. A data element may be a data field
in a database such as a laboratory name, and analyte, or the latitude
of the sampling station. Examples of metadata elements include such
things as sampling and laboratory procedures, quality controls, and
locational measurement accuracy.
The list of data elements is not specific to any particular
database, but is intended to be used voluntarily by agencies,
organizations and individuals to guide their reporting, storage, and
sharing of water quality data. This list is intended primarily to guide
the collection of ambient water quality data, but many of the allowable
sample location and sample type descriptions are versatile enough to be
useful in collecting these data in other settings.
The list of data and metadata elements is divided into categories
that describe who collected and analyzed the sample, what was analyzed,
why the sample was undertaken, when the sample was collected and
analyzed, where the sampling occurred, and how the analysis was done.
The list is intended to describe the breadth of information needed to
ensure the continuing utility of the information both within an
organization and between organizations as information is stored and
shared, but without being an exhaustive list of every possible data
element that could be reported. The Council devoted great efforts to
focus the core set of data elements on the essential data needed across
programs, recognizing that if more extensive data from a particular
monitoring program were collected, it could be made available as well.
III. Authority
The Office of Management and Budget memorandum M-92-01,
Coordination of Water Resources Information (OMB, 1991), established
the Water Information Coordination Program (WICP) to ensure
coordination of water information programs.
The Department of the Interior, through the U.S. Geological Survey,
was designated as the lead agency for the WICP. The Memorandum M-92-01
directed all other Federal organizations funding, collecting, or using
water resources information to assist the U.S. Geological Survey in
ensuring the implementation of an effective WICP. The WICP was
specifically charged with developing uniform standards, guidelines, and
procedures for the collection, analysis, management, and dissemination
of water information in order to improve quality, consistency, and
accessibility nationwide.
The WICP created the Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI)
under the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). FACA
provides the procedures for an advisory committee to be established in
the interest of obtaining advice or recommendations for the President
or one or more agencies or officers of the Federal Government. ACWI
created the National Water Quality Monitoring Council to make
recommendations on how to coordinate and provide guidance and technical
support for the voluntary implementation of the recommendations
presented in the Strategy for Improving Water Quality Monitoring in the
United States (ITFM, 1995b) by government agencies and the private
sector.
The intent of the Strategy is to stimulate the monitoring
improvements needed to achieve comparable and scientifically defensible
information on interpretations, and evaluations of water quality in
fresh surface, water, estuaries and near coastal water, ground water,
and precipitation at local, watershed units, regional, and national
levels. The information is required to support decision making at
local, state, tribal, interstate, and national scales.
During the assembly of the list of data elements, the work groups
assembled by the Council attempted to reduce the number of recommended
data elements in order to minimize the burden of recording the
information each element requires. The Council believes the current
list is the core set of elements that are reasonable to collect and
record in order to allow people, in addition to those initially
collecting the data, to use the data with confidence. This position is
predicated on the Council's belief that water quality data is an
investment with value over time in a single organization and between
organizations and that the investment must be adequately protected with
metadata describing the data such as the Council proposes today. This
represents a departure from current practice for many water quality
monitoring programs, and the Council would like to learn of different
and/or opposing views on this issue.
One specific issue within the wider issue of metadata is the
recording of information about quality control samples, and whether the
set of data elements affords adequate reference to them.
As with any list of data elements, the selection of the specific
names to be used and their definitions are important. The Council
welcomes any specific
[[Page 15275]]
comments or expressions of preferences in this regard.
IV. Consultation
The Core Set of Data Elements for Reporting Water Quality Results
was developed through a collaborative effort with representatives from
the following local, State, and Federal agencies and the water
industry, which are members of the Council: