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Maryland Department of the Environment’s (MDE) recent receipt of a $750,000
grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will facilitate
real-time data availability among health and environmental agencies.
The grant will enable MDE to receive water quality laboratory results as soon as the data are available from the testing laboratories. The funds were awarded to MDE to plan a web-based network for exchanging water quality data between local partners and the department. “This leading-edge system will enable MDE and local health departments to share information more rapidly and respond to problems in a more timely manner,” said MDE Secretary Kendl Philbrick.
Initial data to be included in the network will include: private drinking water wells, public drinking water, and ambient surface water monitoring in the STORET (EPA's STOrage & RETreival) database system. These data are collected by many different agencies, such as local health departments, public drinking water systems, MDE’s Technical and Regulatory Service Administration (TARSA) field staff, and contractors such as Maryland Environmental Service and the University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. The information is currently gathered and transmitted to MDE in a variety of ways, including paper. This new system will standardize and automate the water data reporting process.
“The envisioned system will eliminate the need for manual data entry and diminish errors associated with transcription in addition to increasing the accuracy and timeliness of reporting,” said TARSA Director, Dr. Richard Eskin.
Click on the icon to the left for a diagram that shows the relationships between the various data-sharing partners for this project.
The lynchpin for this project was the decision for the state public health laboratory at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to “go electronic,” because they perform a majority of the water testing for the state. In addition, there are many private water labs as well as public drinking water systems that perform water analysis work. In an informal survey, most of these labs indicated that they would be willing to voluntarily participate in a web-based data exchange system.
Data Share Solutions for Public Safety
Many local health departments have been looking for solutions in collecting and handling their data, and asked MDE for advice. MDE has given presentations on the project to gatherings of local health departments, and asked volunteers to participate in the pilot study. Garrett, Frederick, Carroll and Harford County health
departments signed on. Preliminary discussions led to site visits by MDE staff to determine their current practices of collecting and managing water data. “We even shadowed the sanitarians as they made their rounds in the mud to collect samples from wells,” said Dr. Eskin, “We needed to understand their procedures from beginning to end.”
When operational, the new system will have a user-friendly functionality, incorporating a Geographic Information System. It will enable all the data-sharing partners to see the distribution of chemical contaminants in both surface and ground water, to ultimately help MDE and university scientists to better understand the location and extent of contaminants in the state’s water systems. “This understanding will lead to better control of water contaminants and, ultimately, better quality water for all Marylanders to enjoy,” said Philbrick.
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