Interim Guidance On Release of Sensitive Water Related Information 

In Reply Refer To: 
Office of Information 
Mail Stop 440 



                          MEMORANDUM


                                                  May 9, 2002


To:         Senior Staff 
            Branch Chiefs 
            District Chiefs 
            Data Chiefs 
            Webmasters 
            Publications personnel 

From:       Stephen F. Blanchard /signed/ 
            Acting Chief, Office of Information 
                
Subject:    Interim Guidance On Release of Sensitive Water Related Information 

All Federal agencies have the responsibility, as directed by the White 
House Chief of Staff, to take necessary and appropriate actions to 
safeguard sensitive but unclassified information related to Homeland 
Security.  The U.S. Geological Survey policy is for discipline specific 
guidance to be provided by the Associate Director for each discipline.  
The following is the Water Resource Discipline Interim Guidance on Release 
of Sensitive Water Information: 

1. The main area of concern regarding sensitive information related to 
water is the release of site-specific location information for public 
drinking water supplies (intakes and wells).   

2. Water employees should not release specific location information on 
public drinking water supplies to any individuals or organizations outside 
the Federal Government other than to cooperators.  All other requests for 
this type of information should be referred to the utility or agency 
responsible for the drinking water supply such as local, state, or tribal 
water authorities. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may also be an 
appropriate reference for regional or national level data requests.  
Requests for specific location information for public drinking water 
supplies from cooperators or other Federal agencies may be filled once the 
requesting individual and agency have been verified.  Those requests that 
cannot be easily verified in the cost center will be referred to the 
office of Homeland Security.  All responses will be filled in accordance 
with the USGS Product Access and Distribution Guidance.  
http://www.usgs.gov:8888/webguide/product_access.html 
http://internal.usgs.gov/webguide/product_access.htm

3. New monitoring site names and descriptions should not include 
references to public water supply in their names or site description.  Do 
not include descriptions of water use in the site file.  Consideration 
should be given to removing references to public drinking water sources in 
monitoring sites that already exist, especially drinking water sources 
that serve large populations. 

4. Requests for site inventory databases should always be addressed 
according to the guidelines in #2 above because most site inventory files 
contain site names and specific location information for drinking water 
supplies.  Do not provide text information on names, use, owner or 
purpose. 

5. Districts should not serve data to NWISWeb data that are considered 
sensitive.  Those sites should be flagged with an L  or a P, as described 
in section 1.39, page 28 of  the Ground Water Site Inventory Document 
http://wwwnwis.er.usgs.gov/conversion/nwisdocs4_1/gw/gwcoding_Sect2-1.pdf. 
This ensures that the data are not forwarded to the national public 
server. 

6. If a district has any publicly available application systems which use 
NWIS data, please take steps to ensure that these data are not available 
to the public. 

Questions can be directed to  Katherine Lins. (klins@usgs.gov) or Glenn 
Patterson (gpatter@usgs.gov). 


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Steve Blanchard            Acting Chief,  Office of 
Information        
U.S. Geological Survey          Phone: 703-648-5629
440 National Center             Fax:   703-648-5644      
703-648-5644
Reston, VA  20192               Cell:  571-216-1423   
571-216-1423
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