Millions of people rely on local water sources without knowing if they're safe. Water quality data exists across EPA databases, local utilities, and NGO reports.but it's fragmented, inconsistent, and nearly impossible for a regular person to use. Communities near industrial sites, aging infrastructure, or agricultural runoff have no simple way to check contamination risks. We need open-source tools that aggregate public water quality data and make it understandable at the neighborhood level.
Tribal nations and state agencies collect water quality data using incompatible systems, making it nearly impossible to aggregate results or submit them to the EPA in the required WQX format. Communities downstream from pollution sources have no unified view of what is in their water. Open Waters provides an open-source data management system to solve this, but it needs contributors to modernize the stack and improve usability.