Use USGS's National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) domestic-well program data to characterize private-well water quality

domain: usgs.gov (NAWQA program) · 4 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗

Steps

  1. Start at usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/domestic-private-supply-wells for the program landing page, which summarizes NAWQA's sampling of roughly 2,100+ domestic wells across 30 regionally extensive aquifers in 48 states (1991-2004), testing up to 219 properties/contaminants (major ions, nutrients, trace elements, radon, pesticides, VOCs).
  2. Use the summary circular (pubs.usgs.gov/publication/cir1332) and the Scientific Investigations Report (pubs.usgs.gov/publication/sir20085227) for the headline finding that over 20% of sampled wells contained at least one contaminant at a level of potential health concern.
  3. For raw well-level records, query USGS's National Water Information System (NWIS) — the NAWQA domestic-well data and separate USGS state-level well data are both hosted there as distinct NWIS subsystems (QWDATA/GWSI).
  4. Distinguish this USGS-only NWIS route from the multi-agency Water Quality Portal station/results queries already covered elsewhere in this corpus before citing a source.

Known gotchas

Related routes

Confirm that a private domestic well is not federally regulated for water quality before advising a client on testing obligations
epa.gov/privatewells · 5 steps · unrated
Discover NGWMN groundwater web service capabilities via the SOS GetCapabilities request
cida.usgs.gov · 5 steps · unrated
Query EPA Envirofacts' RESTful Data Service API directly against SDWIS tables for public water system and violation data
enviro.epa.gov · 5 steps · unrated

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