Water Use in New York

Problem - The demand for water in New York State is unevenly distributed. Because increasing competition for local supplies could lead to shortages, it is expedient to know how and where water is withdrawn, delivered, and used. There are many dimensions to water-use issues, and all should be considered to develop a full understanding of the use and delivery of water in the State. In order to apply water-use information to problems of water-demand management, many data elements need to be collected and stored in a convenient location and format. The categories of water use most commonly considered include public-water supply, domestic, thermoelectric power generation, industrial, irrigation and, to a lesser degree, commercial, livestock, aquaculture, and mining. The geographic locations of facilities need to be documented in terms of the county, basin, and street address, if possible. Further, the water sources need to be located by county, basin, and latitude-longitude also, if possible. The source may be groundwater, surface water, or a public-water supply. The list of major customers of individual public suppliers is also very useful information. The data may be found in publications, paper forms, electronic files or data bases.

Objectives - The overall objective of the program is to collect, estimate, store, publish, and update water-use information for New York. More specifically, the water-use project in New York State has three objectives:

• Documentation of data sources by water-use category;
• Collection and estimation of water-use data every 5 years for publication in the "Estimated Use of Water in the United States" circular series. Storage of county aggregations in the "Aggregated Water-Use Data System" (AWUDS) data base of the U.S. Geological Survey; and
• Collection of site-specific water-use data for specific needs and in selected areas. Storage of the site-specific data in the "Site-Specific Water-Use Data System" (SWUDS) data base of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Approach - The sources of data are kept in a documentation file. The data aggregated by county are collected and estimated every 5 years and are stored in AWUDS. The site-specific data are currently stored in computer spreadsheets and will be stored in SWUDS as time permits. In order to accomplish more detailed quality control, data analysis, and data distribution, selected facilities and withdrawal points are located and stored in a geographic information system (GIS).