General Policy for the Use of the Ground Water Site Inventory System In Reply Refer To: March 19, 1992 Mail Stop 411 OFFICE OF GROUND WATER TECHNICAL MEMORANDUM 92.06 Subject: General Policy for the Use of the Ground Water Site Inventory System The purpose of this technical memorandum is to establish an overall policy for the use of the Ground Water Site Inventory (GWSI) of the National Water Information System I (NWIS-I) for operational activities of the Water Resources Division. This policy will have application as well to the GWSI in NWIS-II when it becomes operational. The need for quality-assured data from all of the Division's water-resources activities is critical for addressing the Nation's water problems. Recently, the States were given the responsibility from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop their individual ground-water protection and management strategies. The technical development of these strategies will depend heavily on data and information from the Geological Survey. This effort will be ongoing during the period that the Division will be making the transition from the NWIS-I to the NWIS-II data bases. A recent report, "Review of the U.S. Geological Survey's Ground- Water Site Inventory Data Base," by Robert Faye and Keith McFadden indicated that the GWSI data base is irregularly populated among the districts, large differences exist between the GWIS in NWIS and National Water Data Storage and Retrieval System (WATSTORE) data bases, and few districts have a well-defined policy on the population and use of the ground-water data bases. To begin to address the irregular population of GWSI, from this date forward ground-water data from all active projects shall use GWSI for data storage and retrieval. Site data for all wells in water-level observation networks must be entered in GWSI. In addition, continuous records for all observation wells must be entered in the daily values files of NWIS. Site information for individual wells and springs for which data are to be shown in published reports must be entered into GWSI. Additional Office of Ground Water technical memorandums will be issued that address specific procedures for the collection of ground-water data in the field, checking and verification of field data, entry of ground-water data into the GWSI, checking and verification of data entry, entry of past paper file data, and other aspects of ground-water data collection and storage as needed. /s/ Joseph S. Rosenshein Acting Chief, Office of Ground Water Distribution A B S FO PO