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Plan for National Assessment of Water Availability and Use <br />Introduction <br />Will there be enough water in the right place, at the right time, and of the right quality to <br />satisfy future human and ecosystem needs? There is a growing urgency in the search for <br />answers to these questions. In many areas of the United States, water of acceptable <br />quality is harder to find, allocated to prior uses, and depleted by drought stress or <br />overuse. <br />Because of a growing need for information to help solve water availability problems and <br />at the request of the House Appropriations Committee, the U.S. Geological Survey <br />(USGS) recently prepared a report, "Concepts for National Assessment of Water <br />Availability and Use" (http://water.usjzs.gov/pubs/circ/circl223 . This report outlined a <br />national program to provide information on existing conditions and historical trends in <br />surface -water flows and storage, ground -water storage and depletion, and water <br />withdrawals and uses. The information would be delivered in an integrated form to a <br />broad array of policymakers, water managers, and the public. <br />The proposed program is analogous to other Federal programs that produce and regularly <br />update indicator variables to describe economic, demographic, and health conditions of <br />the Nation. In this case, the question becomes "What is the availability of water resources <br />in the Nation and how does this availability relate to demand, source, and geographic <br />location ?" <br />A key aspect in the early phases of the program is the opportunity to achieve feedback <br />from potential customers on the design of the program and the value of different types of <br />information and products that could be produced. The USGS will coordinate the design <br />and development of the program with agencies in the regions under study. Likewise, the <br />program will be coordinated at a national level through the Advisory Committee on <br />Water Information (see http://water.usgs.gov/wiep/ for more information on the Advisory <br />Committee) to ensure that the program is relevant to a broad range of interests nationwide <br />and that information produced by the USGS can be aggregated with other types of <br />socioeconomic and environmental data that are related to water availability. A review of <br />the program will be requested from the National Research Council within the first few <br />years. As initially envisioned at this time, subject to lessons learned in the pilot effort <br />and review by the National Research Council, the full program is expected to produce up- <br />dated national assessments every five years, through a process of revisiting each of the <br />water resource regions of the Nation to track the trends in streamflow, ground -water <br />levels and water use. <br />The assessment of water availability will require cooperation between the Federal <br />government and the States. Even though water availability is largely the responsibility of <br />State and local government, the Federal government has an important role to play in the <br />scientific assessment of the resource, for the following reasons: 1) The Federal <br />government has a responsibility for assessment of the Nation's natural resources and <br />economic and ecological conditions. This is needed to help guide national policy and <br />investment strategies (there is a long history of large Federal investments in water <br />