National Surface Water Survey

Ideally, lakes and streams have a pH between 6 and 8. However, according to the National Surface Water Survey (NSWS) conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency between 1984 and 1986, the most acidic lake in the country, Little Echo Pond in Franklin, New York, had a pH of 4.2. According to the same survey, the Pine Barrens region of New Jersey also has a very high percentage of acidic rivers. More than 90% of the streams in that area are considered acidic. This is very bad news for the fish that live in these lakes and streams. 

Acid rain primarily affects sensitive bodies of water, that is, those that rest atop soil with a limited ability to neutralize acidic compounds (called buffering capacity ). Many lakes and streams examined in a National Surface Water Survey (NSWS) suffer from chronic acidity, a condition m which water lias a constant low (acidic) pH level. The survey investigated tlie effects of acidic deposition in over 1,000 lakes larger than 10 acres and in thousands of miles of streams believed to be sensitive to acidification. Of the lakes and streams surveyed in the NSWS, arid rain has been determined to cause acidity in 75 percent of the acidic lakes and about 50 percent of tlie acidic streams. Several regions in the U.S. were identified as containing many of the surface waters sensitive to acidification. They include, but are not limited to, the Adirondacks. the mid-Appalachian highlands, the upper Midwest, and the high elevation West. 

The National Surface Water Survey, National Stream Survey, Phase I, Pilot Survey Summary of Quality Assurance Data Results... 

National Surface Water Survey, Western Lake Survey (Phase 1, Synoptic Chemistry) Quality Assurance Report... 

A large study of acidity in U.S. lakes and streams, called the National Surface Water Survey (NSWS), concluded that over 2000 lakes and streams in the eastern United States have high acidity levels due to acid rain. In many sensitive lakes and streams, acid levels are high enough that fish species, such as the brook trout, have been eradicated. In the worst cases, acid levels are so high that the entire lake is effectively dead, supporting no marine life. Eastern Canada has also been affected by pollutants from U.S. power plants. The Canadian government estimates that 14,000 lakes in eastern Canada are acidic, at least partly due to U.S. emissions. 

Hites 1978, 1979). The annual mean concentration of phenol in water from the lower Mississippi River was 1.5 ppb (EPA 1980). River water in an unspecified location in the United States was reported to contain 10-100 ppb of phenol (Jungclaus et al. 1978). Phenol was detected, but not quantified, in a Niagara River watershed (Elder et al. 1981) and in 2 of 110 raw water samples analyzed during the National Organic Monitoring Survey (EPA 1980). In the STORET database, 7% of 2,181 data points for U.S. surface waters were positive for the presence of phenol the mean and range of the reported concentrations were 533 ppb and 0.002-46,700 ppb, respectively (EPA 1988c). 

U.S. Geological Service report of a survey of pesticides in the nation s waters concluded that pesticides were common in surface and shallow groundwaters in both urban and agricultural areas, but investigators were not able to determine whether contamination is decreasing or increasing. 

Figure 17a. Relationship between median wet deposition ofN (N03 + NH4+) and median surface-water N (N03 + NH4+) concentrations for physiograph-ical districts within the National Stream Survey that have minimal agricultural activity. [Subregions are Poconos-C at skills (ID), Southern Blue Ridge Province (2As), Valley and Ridge Province (2Bn), Northern Appalachians (2Cn), Ozarks—Ouachitas (2D), Southern Appalachians (2X), Piedmont (3A), mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain (3B), and Florida (3C)]. (Panel a is reproduced with permission from reference 96. Copyright 1991 American Geophysical Union.)...

Other sources of silver release to surface waters include textile plant wastewater effluent (Rawlings and Samfield 1979) petroleum refinery effluents (Snider and Manning 1982) and quench water and fly ash scrubber water efflunents from municipal incinerators (Law and Gordon 1979). Silver was detected in 7 of 58 (12%) samples from the National Urban Runoff Program survey (Cole et al. 

Larson SJ, Capel PD, Majewski MS (1997) Pesticides in Surface Waters—Distribution, Trends and Governing Factors. In Gilliom RJ (ed) Pesticides in the Hydrologic System, Volume 3, U.S. Geological Survey, National Water Quality Assessment Program. Ann Arbor Press, Inc., Chelsea... 

Composite data from the Comprehensive Emergency Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) monitoring program indicate that benzene was detected at a frequency of 11.2% in groundwater in the vicinity of 178 inactive hazardous waste disposal sites (Plumb 1987). Data from a 1980 national survey by the Council on Environmental Quality on groundwater and surface water contamination showed benzene concentrations in contaminated drinking water wells in New York, New... 

Ball, J. W., Nordstrom, D. K., Jenne, E. A., and Vivit, D. V.. 1998, Chemical analyses ofhot springs, pools, geysers and surface waters from Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, and vicinity, 1974-75 U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report, 98-182, 45 p. 

Busenberg, R, Plummer, L. N., Doughten, M. W., Widman, P. K., and Bartholomay, R. C., 2000, Chemical and isotopic composition and gas concentrations of ground water and surface water from selected sites at and near the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Idaho, 1994-97 U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report, 00-81,55 p. 

USEPA (1997) Incidence and Severity of Sediment Contamination in Surface Waters of the United States. Volume I National Sediment Quality Survey, EPA 823-R-97-006. US Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC. 

Currents in the Sound are due to the tidal stream, to the estuarine circulation, and to wind stress acting on the water surface. Systematic surveys of the currents in the Sound have been made from time to time by the U.S. National Ocean Survey. Current meters have been placed in grid-pattern arrays for time intervals sufficiently long to reveal the principal tidal constituents of the current. Data obtained this way were used by G. A. Riley (1952, 1956) to describe the estuarine circulation of the Sound. The utility of these meter records in the study of sediment transport is limited because the observations were all made during the... 

Westrick, J. J. (1990). National Surveys of Volatile Organic Compounds in Ground and Surface Water. In Significance and Treatment of Volatile Organic Compounds in Water Supplies (N. M. Ram, R. F Christman, and K. P. Cantor, eds.), pp. 103-138, Lewis Publishers, Chelsea, MI. 

For these very reasons, the US Congress supported the US Geological Survey s National Water Quality Assessment Program with its goals to describe the status and trends in water quality of our Nation s surface and groundwater, and to... 

---