US Environmental Protection Agency BASINS metadata reports -
"This data set provides a limited set of raw water quality observation data for the conterminous United States. The data are extracted from the U.S. EPA Storage and Retrieval of US Waters Parametric Data (STORET) which is contributed by a number of organizations including federal, state, interstate agencies, universities, contractors, individuals and water laboratories. Data updates are performed weekly. Each provider of data is responsible for the data it submits to STORET. For distribution with BASINS v.2.0, raw water quality data was extracted from STORET for a maximum of 15 stations per cataloging unit. The WQOBS data were prepared in Arcview shape file format while selected relational attributes were prepared in Arcview DBF file format."
"The STORET database serves as a repository of waterway parametric data, including information on ambient, intensive survey, effluent and biological water quality."
"Intended use of data: This data set was prepared to support the U.S. EPA BASINS (Better Assessment Science Integrating Point and Nonpoint Sources) System. References_Cited: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1992). "Office of Water Environmental and Program Information Systems Compendium", Office of Water, U.S. EPA, Washington, D.C." Limitations_of_Data: None
US Environmental Protection Agency BASINS metadata reports -
"NONE"
CREDIT Please acknowledge USEPA. The data was developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of BASINS 3.0
"The BASINS Water Quality Observations dataset was created by extracting data from STORET for a maximum of 15 water quality stations per cataloging unit. The selection of the stations was based upon data extent and completeness. The main criteria were period of measurement, number of parameters, and number of observations. If a cataloging unit contains less than 15 stations, all were extracted. A BASINS water quality station ID was assigned to each station in order to facilitate links and joins within BASINS between station data and the monitoring data summary. For distribution with BASINS v2.0, ARCVIEW shapefiles which included the spatial extent of each of the ten U.S. EPA Regions, plus the 8-digit hydrologic units that crossed region boundaries were prepared to indicate the geographic locations of the monitoring stations within the region."