🏆 This won an award at the 2019 California Water Data Challenge.

Summary

Present sources of water quality information in California (i.e. - consumer confidence reports, or CCRs) are fragmented across thousands of water utilities in the state, lack consistency and clarity, and tend to communicate data via hard-to-understand tables (see 3 examples of CCRs below, or view them in their entirely¹.).

Near-real-time, standardized, and easy to understand water quality reports would improve the public’s understanding of the water they buy and consume. Automated creation of water quality reports would ease reporting responsibilities for water agencies, freeing them to tackle harder problems.

This project aimed to build a “weather app” for California community water system water quality. The benefits of this approach include standardization, consistency across agencies, ease of use, and near-real-time water quality information.

The project aggregates publicly available water quality data for all California community water systems to report:

• compliance status
• chemicals detected within the past 2 years
• average detection levels for all contaminants tested for
• water quality indicators
• local water and health system contact information