NEWS NOTES ON SUSTAINABLE WATER RESOURCESWater Qualityhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_quality“Water quality refers to the chemical, physic...
Published on by Tim Smith, Employee at Retiree & P/T Consultant
Water Quality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_quality
“Water quality refers to the chemical, physical, biological, and radiological characteristics of water. It is a measure of the condition of water relative to the requirements of one or more biotic species, or to any human need or purpose. It is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which compliance, generally achieved through treatment of the water, can be assessed. The most common standards used to assess water quality relate to health of ecosystems, safety of human contact, and drinking water.”
There is a great deal of information available on this topic. This includes the Standards established for water quality, as well as the categories of use shown below:
Human consumption
Industrial and domestic use
Environmental water quality
Many other aspects of water quality are covered on this site.
To locate water quality data, try this site: https://www.waterqualitydata.us/
This site is the Water Quality Portal. “The Water Quality Portal (WQP) is a cooperative service sponsored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Water Quality Monitoring Council (NWQMC) that integrates publicly available water quality data from the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS) the EPA STOrage and RETrieval (STORET) Data Warehouse, and the USDA ARS Sustaining The Earth’s Watersheds - Agricultural Research Database System (STEWARDS).”