Stat 499

Undergraduate Research in Water Quality Regulations

Winter 2008

The goal of this project is to produce a poster that can be submitted to the Undergraduate Research Symposium. A poster on air quality regulations was produced by an earlier undergraduate researcher. You can use it for ideas, but you are not supposed to do exactly the same thing. Your poster will reflect your research, wherever it may lead you.

First assignment

Look up the US Environmental Protection Agency web pages on the Clean Water Act. Work through the Watershed Academy's web based training module called Introduction to the Clear Water Act. Produce 4-5 bullet points summarizing what kinds of pollution the Clean Water Act is about, and what it says about setting water quality regulations.

Second assignment

What are the measurements the EPA requires states to make on drinking water? What law regulates drinking water? What cities in Washington have violations of the drinking water regulations?

Third assignment

Try to determine the location of the drinking water systems that were in violation in 2006. Also find out what the penalty is for swimming in a reservoir. I don't think an empirical approach is needed... For city drinking water reports here is a link.

Fourth assignment

Begin looking for regulations on drinking water and/or tap water for Turkey, Scotland (and Sweden?). We want to compare and contrast these to the Washington state regulations abnd violations.
Also, start sketching a layout for the poster and draft an abstract. Here is the abstract for Laura Knudsen's poster two years ago.

Fifth assignment

Edit the abstract on the new wiki. Continue gathering information on Sweden, Scotland and Turkey drinking water regulations and violations.

Sixth assignment

Final edit and submission of abstract to Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Seventh assignment

First draft of PowerPoint file for poster. Things to think about:

Which pollutants go in the main table? They need to be those for which we can get information. There could be a category "Other" where we dump stuff that is country specific.
Do you want maps of violations for the different countries?
What kind of pictures do you want?

Eighth assignment

Each of you need to provide your byllets for the country/state specific piece, and the data for the central table.

here are some links to environmental sites.