Is USGS responsible for monitoring drinking water?
No. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and specifically, the National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program, does not assess the quality of the Nation’s drinking water, such as for compliance. Rather, NAWQA assessments focus mainly on the quality of the available, untreated resource (source water), such as water upstream from treatment plants and water from public-supply and domestic wells. This is the first NAWQA study that also looks at the quality of water at public water-supply intakes and of treated (or “finished”) water, represented in this study by sampling of water after treatment but before distribution. The goal of such efforts is to understand and compare occurrence patterns in source water to patterns that may also occur in treated water. The assessments are intended to complement drinking-water monitoring required by Federal, State, and local programs, which focus primarily on post-treatment compliance monitoring. In addition, findings are intended to evaluate what is i
