Developing a Texas Groundwater Monitoring Strategy

HARC worked with the Texas Groundwater Protection Committee (TGPC) to develop a Texas Groundwater Monitoring Strategy. The needs for the groundwater quality monitoring strategy developed in this project and described in the Texas Groundwater Monitoring Strategy are predicated on the strategy of the TGPC. The TGPC was created in 1989 to develop a groundwater protection strategy that would protect Texas' groundwater from contamination and lead to coordinated actions by the relevant state agencies (Water Code Sec. 26.405). There are multiple regulatory and non regulatory groundwater programs managed by state agencies that generate monitoring data from water wells in Texas. However, there has been no assessment to determine whether these monitoring activities represent sufficient conditions for protection of Texas' groundwater resources.

Groundwater management is emphasized in the TGPC strategy document and a subcommittee was created to address needs in this area. The Texas Groundwater Monitoring Strategy project was conducted in cooperation with the Data Management Subcommittee of the TGPC. The TGPC recognizes that groundwater protection requires monitoring data and assessments based on such data. Of course, quality assurance and standard methods are necessary to accurate assessments of water quality. Once data quality and comparability are incorporated into the groundwater quality data collection system, then issues of data management and analysis must be addressed. Major challenges exist for the construction of a data management system that will satisfactorily meet the needs of Texas on groundwater protection. The larger, publicly accessible groundwater quality databases were reviewed. The challenges of combining the relevant data held by the various agencies into a distributed data management system were addressed.

In addition to the challenges of collecting, screening and analyzing monitoring information that is currently being collected, there are large gaps in the monitoring of certain types of contaminants that are of concern to water managers. The Texas Groundwater Monitoring Strategy report recommends systematic monitoring of pesticides and other organic compounds that represent significant health threats if occurring in groundwater, but implementation of the recommendations will require more resources for the monitoring organizations. HARC anticipates that the strategy proposed in this report will help to guide the process to affect a comprehensive, efficient system of collecting, managing and analyzing information needed to detect and respond to issues of groundwater quality in Texas. Note: The Texas Groundwater Monitoring Strategy report was prepared for the TGPC in fulfillment of a contract with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and has not been adopted wholly or in part by the TGPC or any other state agency at this time.

Stephanie Glenn, PI

Jim Lester