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NHD INDEXED LOCATIONS FOR WATER QUALITY STANDARDS (WQS)
Description:
State (also includes DC, tribes, and territories; i.e., "jurisdictions") Water Quality Standards' Designated Uses for river segments, lakes, and estuaries. The Water Quality Standards' Designated Uses are able to be linked to tables of water quality criteria which are located in EPA's Water Quality Standards Database. Water Quality Standards coded onto route.rch (Transport and Coastline Reach) feature of the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) to create NHD Linear and Point Events. Point events are attached to a reach in NHD for many reasons: to represent an estuary; represent a drinking water intake point; or to represent a designated use when there is no reach in NHD to represent that reach. Water Quality Standards coded onto the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) Waterbody Reaches (region.rch) to create Waterbody Shapefiles. In addition to NHD reach indexed data there may also be custom shapefiles (point, line, or polygon) that are not associated with NHD and are in an EPA standard format that is compatible with EPA's Reach Address Database. These custom shapefiles are used to represent Water Quality Standards that are not represented well in NHD.