|
The Georgia EPD Water Resources Database (WRDB) 305(b) module was developed to assist EPD personnel while performing the bi-annual statewide water quality evaluation mandated by Section 305(b) of the Clean Water Act. This module optionally runs under the WRDB program and allows the user to identify an arbitrary number “reaches” (for example, streams, estuaries, and lakes) evaluate them with regard to their attainment of specified water quality goals, and generate standard detailed and summary reports.
The 305(b) module has two purposes. The first purpose is to facilitate compilation and reporting of summary data for individual reaches in the State. In other words, it will replace the word processing approach currently used and provide a set of tools to manage reach, violation, and source data, generate individual reach reports, and compile data into summary tables as found in the biannual reports. This function can operate completely independently from any other WRDB tables.
The second purpose is to analyze available WRDB data and determine whether water quality exceedances have occurred, apply rather complicated water quality standards, and evaluate each reach in regards to its overall compliance with the standards. This two-pronged approach is chosen because the evaluation of many reaches is based upon data that are not likely to be entered into WRDB tables. The 305(b) module can extract as much information as possible from the WRDB data files and perform evaluations for the appropriate criteria. Other criteria (such as biotic data) that are evaluated elsewhere or are not as quantitative can still be manually tracked using the database.
It was decided that additional modules would be “loadable”. That is, they are accessible only when desired by the user. This prevents WRDB from succumbing to “feature bloat”. A method was developed to load new modules using the “Add-In Manager”, a new menu item in WRDB. When activated, an addition drop-down menu appears in WRDB, giving the user access to these options:
The 305(b) module has the following features: · Forms for editing twelve (four reach and eight support) relational tables that comprise the 305(b) database · Table structure that will allow analysis of observed data to determine compliance with water quality criteria · Ability to select data using SQL queries on any of the linked tables · A browser that displays the selected data · Ability to print detail and summary reports · A GIS tool to display and query reach information interactively
|
