In Reply Refer To:
Mail Stop 412 October 22, 2001
Subject: USGS Capabilities and
Plans Related to Water System Security
In recent weeks,
several Districts have been contacted by cooperators asking what can be done to
provide early-warning monitoring of source water for public water
supplies. There are many promising
sensors and monitoring systems in varying stages of development, but relatively
few that are commercially available and even fewer that have been tested by
USGS. We plan to initiate a joint
program with the DOE Sandia National Laboratory to provide field-testing for
some of the advanced sensors they have been developing, and this holds promise
for future monitoring systems for our cooperators. One such sensor, the "micro-chemlab on a chip," is
described, as a hand-held application, in a fact sheet available at http://www.ca.sandia.gov/microchem/McCmLab.pdf. We hope to have the field-testing program in
place with Sandia sometime this year.
Various
biomonitoring systems have been designed to test for a broad range of toxic
substances in water. The principle is
the same as the canary in the coal mine:
a sentinel species is exposed to the water, and adverse effects are
detected through some physiological change.
Such a system would be likely to detect most of the acutely dangerous
chemical and biological toxins, but would not provide detection of pathogenic
microbes such as bacteria, viruses, and protozoa. These systems, especially when automated, are expensive, but they
may provide a measure of desired protection depending on your cooperator’s
need. The Office of Water Quality (OWQ)
has gathered some information on commercially available biomonitoring systems
and has included this information in this message. None of these systems has been tested by the USGS, and their
being mentioned in this message does not imply any endorsement by the
USGS. If you and your cooperator are
interested in pursuing such a system, you are encouraged to determine whether
such a system might meet your requirements.
We would also like you to know about three
supplemental budget requests for fiscal year 2002, related to water system
security, that have gone forward to DOI.
1. $11 million for the Mapping Discipline, and
$2.4 million for the Water Discipline, for enhancements related to the National
Hydrography Dataset (NHD). This
includes improving the resolution of the NHD in about 400 watersheds with
drinking-water intakes, acquiring computer infrastructure to store, manage, and
deliver the NHD data, associating USGS streamflow gages with NHD stream
reaches, associating dams with NHD stream reaches, estimating flow, velocity,
and volume for each NHD reach, and re-compiling time-of-travel information from
paper reports into a digital file.
These enhancements, along with work already underway to associate
water-supply intakes with NHD stream reaches, would facilitate more accurate
estimates of travel time between any two points on the NHD stream network,
including intakes.
2. $2 million for the Water Discipline to
support the proposed field-testing program for sensors developed at Sandia Labs
(see above).
3. $3 million for the Water Discipline to
determine background concentrations in water of some pathogens likely to be
used in terrorist attacks, so that intentional releases can be distinguished
from natural background occurrence.
The first request
has gone forward from DOI to OMB; the second two have been submitted to
DOI.
If you have questions about the USGS and water
system security, please contact Steve Sorenson (sorenson@usgs.gov,
703/648-6864) or Glenn Patterson (gpatter@usgs.gov, 703/648-6876).
Stephen K. Sorenson
Acting Chief, Office
of Water Quality
Attachment
This memorandum does not supersede any other
OWQ Technical Memorandum.
Distribution: District Chiefs, District and Regional
Water-Quality Specialists, and Senior Staff