From 2016-2023, the Vermont Geological Survey participated in the Water Use and Data Research (WUDR) Program, funded by the United States Geological Survey. A major goal of the WUDR program is to improve the availability, quality, compatibility, and delivery of water-use data collected or estimated by states to support National water-use assessments. VT DEC's long term objective for this project was to produce higher quality water withdrawal and consumptive use data to apply towards water budget analyses, identification of geographic areas in need of detailed groundwater and hydrogeological information, and to apply to better management of Vermont's water resources.
The VGS focused on the following priority objectives from 2017-2022 to improve the quality of Vermont’s water-use data:
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Locate a high percentage of poorly located wells in the Vermont well completion database;
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Move snowmaking data from paper/PDF records to database format;
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Populate a database with information and GPS locations for large volume groundwater withdrawals;
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Compile reported wastewater data from facilities across Vermont and correlate reported discharges with location of outflows;
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Develop a list of facilities, determine water source, collect GPS locations of all intakes, and determine aquifer type for a) irrigation (golf courses) and b) aquaculture (fish hatcheries);
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Standardize withdrawal database for hydroelectric power facilities.
The above priority objectives were completed and delivered to USGS in 2019 and 2022, respectively. To summarize this work, the VGS created four interactive ArcGIS Dashboards to visualize the improvements made to Vermont's water-use data: