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Water Quality Monitoring:
- Public drinking water suppliers are required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under the Safe Drinking Water Act, to
monitor water that is provided for public consumption. The National
Park Service conducts this monitoring and provides the results to the
California Department of Health Services, who are tasked with oversight
of the results to guarantee that safe drinking water is being supplied
to the public. These data are available on-line at the U.S. E.P.A.'s "STORET" data clearing house: http://www.epa.gov/storet/.
- These data were analyzed in October 1999 along with other types of data by EPA, and the results of their evaluation are observable on the "Index of Watershed Indicators" for the Upper King Cataloging Unit at: http://www.epa.gov/iwi/hucs/18030010/score.html.
Their rating for this basin states "More Serious Problems - Low Vulnerability", but a closer look at the "Condition & Vulnerability
Indicator Graphs" shows that this rating is based to a large
extent on what they refer to as "Insufficient Data". This is one of the reasons why the Friends of the South Fork Kings is trying to improve the availability of information for at least this part of the basin.
- Point sources of various types, including waste water treatment plants, are required by the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) within the U.S. Environmental Protection agency to monitor their operations as required by permits that are
issued and regulated locally by the California Regional Water Resources
Control Board. The results of this type of monitoring are only available by visiting the Fresno office of the Regional Board and sorting through their hard copy monitoring records. We are seeking local volunteers who could visit these files and automate the results for presentation on this web site.
- Periodically, research studies are funded to provide data needed to answer specific questions or to provide baseline data that can be used for comparison against data collected later in time to determine changes over time.
- The Roaring River tributary was monitored in the 1970's as part of a study by the U.S. Geological Survey (Hoffman and others, 1976) to determine the impacts on stream water quality that results from fires
that recently burned in the area. The results indicated that nutrient contents in streams following fires are increased.
- Baseline water quality data for the S.F.Kings River was gathered at several locations during a statewide project in the 1980's by the USGS
to establish baseline data in watersheds where their sister agency in
the U.S. Department of Interior, the National Park Service, managed
properties.
- Data from both of these studies can be downloaded from
http://water.usgs.gov/nwis.
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