A Water Quality Index for Ecology's Stream Monitoring Program is a new publication being offered by the State of Washington's Department of Ecology. A description of the work in part states that "the Water Quality Index is intended as a tool to summarize and report Ecology's Freshwater Monitoring Unit's routine stream monitoring data...determined for temperature, pH, fecal coliform bacteria,...

A new report from the US Geological Survey has been made available entitled Assessing Ground-Water Vulnerability to Contamination: Providing Scientifically Defensible Information for Decision Makers. The report provides a look at the common approaches used to scientifically determine the factors controlling the vulnerability of groundwater resources to contamination. The introduction states that...

Teams of researchers at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) work to provide scientific information and innovative technologies to support the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. The materials generated by these teams are contained within four areas that include Drinking Water and Systems, Water Quality Research, Water Monitoring, and Water Tools and Technology. Within...

Penned by Balazs M. Fekete, Charles J. Vorosmarty, and Wolfgang Grabs of the University of New Hampshire's Global Hydrology Group, this report entitled "Global, Composite Runoff Fields Based on Observed River Discharge and Simulated Water Balances" explains "the potential of combining observed river discharge information with [a] climate-driven Water Balance Model in order to develop composite...

The US Environmental Protection Agency has recently released a final regulation for Methods for Measuring the Acute Toxicity of Effluents and Receiving Waters to Freshwater. This involves the approval of several test procedures for measuring the toxicity of effluents and receiving waters, which are referred to as whole effluent toxicity or WET test methods. Visitors can download the entire 275...

This US Geological Survey Open-File Report (00-212) describes analytical techniques for benthic macroinvertebrates. Available in .pdf format, the 49-page report includes information on such analytical techniques as chemical equipment supplies, taxonomic identification, and more.

The National Groundwater Association's stated purpose is to provide guidance to members, government representatives, and the public for sound development, protection, and management of the world's ground water resources. The Web site contains everything needed to stay current, including a daily updated news service, a publications link, events calendar, certification information, buyers guides,...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Water has released a publication concerning the quality of drinking water in America that supplements the recent 1997 National Public Water System Annual Compliance Report (discussed in the April 28, 1999 Scout Report for Science & Engineering). The National Recommended Water Quality Criteria is a compilation of the new recommended criteria for...

The US Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) gives this report from a paper given at the Animal Residuals Management Conference 2000. Percolation, runoff, soil erosion, and manure loadings were used to estimate watershed vulnerability to contamination from manure. The study concluded that the Cape Fear and Lower Arkansas River Basins were the most vulnerable....

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Water has released a publication concerning the quality of drinking water in America that supplements the recent 1997 National Public Water System Annual Compliance Report (discussed in the April 28, 1999 Scout Report for Science & Engineering). This report documents the experiences of seventeen drinking water suppliers who draw from lakes,...