CRS Report Analyzes Streamgaging Issues for Congress
Early this March, CCA member Anna Normand of the Congressional Research Service published a report, available online: "U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Streamgaging Network: Overview and Issues for Congress." Its 23 pages tell of the USGS National Streamgaging Network, started out West in 1889 and now encompassing 11,340 gauges, 8,460 year-round. Heavy on budgetary information (it is meant for congressional staffers working on funding the USGS), the report is most interesting in its description of the "Next Generation Water Observing System" (NGWOS)—a program started in 2018 that aims to estimate streamflow in ungauged locations and serve as a testing bed for new water technologies for the USGS. The Delaware River basin—think Lehigh, Brandywine, and Tohickon—is the first of 10 where the USGS will pilot this new strategy.
Of interest, too, is the report's discussion of the USGS’s Cooperative Matching Funds Program, a way of getting other agencies and private entities to pony up part of the costs of certain gauges. This calls to mind that the CCA River Access Committee is looking for help in finding a funding partner for the critical Hollofield gauge on the Patapsco, headed for the block Sept. 30 (see Cruiser Jan-Feb 2021, p. 9).
—Alf Cooley