About the Council
What is the National Water Quality Monitoring Council?The Council was created in 1997 as a vehicle for bringing together diverse expertise needed to develop collaborative, comparable, and cost-effective approaches for monitoring and assessing our Nation’s water quality. The approaches are fundamental to the successful management and sustainability of our waters, and are increasingly important because water issues are becoming more complex, resources are tighter, and the demand for high-quality water continues to grow in order to support a complex web of human activities and aquatic ecosystem needs.The National Water Quality Monitoring Council (Council) provides a national forum for coordination of comparable and scientifically defensible methods and strategies to improve water quality monitoring, assessment and reporting, and promotes partnerships to foster collaboration, advance the science, and improve management within all elements of the water quality monitoring community. Vital to this role, the Council provides a voice for monitoring practitioners across the Nation and fosters increased understanding and stewardship of our water resources. |
What is the Advisory Committee on Water Information?Federal activities and funding for water resources information are integrally tied to partnerships with non-Federal entities. Therefore, the Secretary of the Interior established an advisory committee under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) to help implement the program at the national level. The purposes of the Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI) are to identify water information needs, evaluate their effectiveness of water information programs and recommend improvements. The member organizations represent all levels of government, tribal interests, and the private sector. The Chair of the ACWI is Interior's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science. The Alternate Chair is the Associate Director for Water of the USGS. The Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI) represents the interests of water-information users and professionals in advising the Federal Government on Federal water-information programs and their effectiveness in meeting the Nation's water-information needs. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) originally established the Water Information Coordination Program (WICP) in the 1960's. In 1991 OMB updated the authority and established the Water Information Coordination Program by issuing Memorandum No. 92-01. The overall purpose of the program is to improve water information for decision making about natural resources management and environmental protection. The memorandum designates the Department of the Interior, through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), as the lead agency. Other Federal organizations that fund, collect, or use water resources information work together with the USGS to implement program recommendations. |
| EPA Co-Chair: Susan Holdsworth (holdsworth.susan@epa.gov), Chief of the Monitoring Branch, EPA Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds, Washington, DC | |
| USGS Co-Chair: Michael Yurewicz (mcyurewi@usgs.gov), Council Co-Chair (NAWQA), Reston, VA | |
| Exec. Sec: Cathy Tate (cmtate@usgs.gov), Lakewood, CO |
