Background
Click here to view an informational slide show on the Methods Board
The Methods
Board is a partnership of water-quality experts from federal
agencies, states, tribes, municipalities, industry, and
private organizations. The Methods and Data Comparability
Board and the National
Water Quality Monitoring Council were created in 1997,
as subgroups of the Advisory
Committee on Water Information (ACWI), which is formally
chartered under the Federal
Advisory Committee Act.
Each year, government agencies
(local, State, Tribal, and Federal), industry, academic researchers,
and a wide variety of private organizations in the United
States devote enormous amounts of time and several billion
dollars to the monitoring, protection, and restoration of
water resources and watersheds. This work includes:
• monitoring the status and trends in water
quality,
• identifying and ranking existing and emerging problems,
• designing and implementing resource-management programs,
and
• determining compliance with regulatory programs.
The information
gathered through these activities is certainly useful to
the data collectors themselves. However, critical differences
in project design, methods, data analysis, and data management
have often made it difficult for monitoring information
to be shared by other potential data users.
Accurate,
cost-effective, and efficient assessment of the nation's
water resources-within and among watersheds- requires that
monitoring entities plan and work collaboratively and strive
for comparability in methods and data management. The design
and implementation of assessment and management programs
should be a cooperative product of the various monitoring
agencies and organizations active in any given watershed.
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