WATERS Geospatial Data Downloads

Description

Geospatial data for EPA's Office of Water Programs are available as prepackaged national downloads or as more current GIS web and and data services. EPA provides WATERS geospatial data in a variety of formats including Geographical Information Systems (GIS) compatible geodatabases, as well as ESRI and OGC web mapping services.

National Geospatial Datasets

National geospatial datasets provided on this page are produced and periodically updated by EPA using state-submitted data. These datasets are created based on information in WATERS on the date of extract. To be included in this dataset states and other jurisdictions must have submitted information to the program database and be indexed to NHDPlus hydrography. Due to the nature and complexity of providing a national snapshot of program data, EPA has provided a fact sheet to accompany and clarify the contents of each dataset.

Current ATTAINS Program Data

ATTAINS Water Quality Assessment GIS Dataset
Download Extracted on January 17, 2025	National: OGC GeoPackage (14 GB) Esri File Geodatabase (6 GB) ArcGIS Pro Project Package (4 GB)
Download Extracted on January 17, 2025	State Extracts:
Metadata	Metadata is located at data.gov, the United States government's open data website.
Additional Information	This dataset provides information about the conditions of the nation’s surface waters. States, territories and authorized tribes (states for brevity) assess the quality of their surface waters and report it to EPA as part of their Integrated Report, which combines Clean Water Act Sections 303(d) and 305(b). This dataset provides the spatial locations of state-defined Assessment Units and Assessment decisions for those waters. Designated Use and assessed Parameter information have been rolled up into groups. This dataset also includes attributes indicating the Assessment Units that have one or more Actions (a.k.a., Plans, such as Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), Alternative Restoration Plans, Protection Plans, etc.) associated with the water. For more information, please see https://www.epa.gov/waterdata/attains. This dataset provides the latest information submitted to EPA for each state. States typically provide this data to EPA every two years, but the currency of the data may vary by state. The Control table indicates the latest data available for each state. This dataset replaces the separate Pre-2015 geospatial datasets for CWA Section 303(d), 305(b), and TMDLs.

BEACH Program Data

Beaches OW Linked Dataset
Download Extracted on Apr 28, 2024 Changelog (Excel)(13 K)	OGC GeoPackage (4.1 MB) Esri File Geodatabase (4.9 MB) ArcGIS Pro Project Package (4.6 MB) Attributes Only (Excel, 1 MB)
Metadata	Metadata is located at data.gov, the United States government's open data website.
Additional Information	For this dataset as of 2014, OW Linked Data events have been indexed to NHDPlus v2.1 hydrology (previous versions utilized NHDPlus v1.0 hydrology). Fact Sheet: BEACH Act Locational Data (pdf) (146.2 KB, Mar 2024, EPA 840-F-14-001)
Geospatial and Attribute Linkage Information	Selected attributes are included with the above downloads.

Historical Water Quality Standards Program Data Archive

303(c) Water Quality Standards Reach Indexed Dataset Archive
This is the final release of WQS as of December 2007.
Download Extracted on March 18, 2010	Shapefiles (817 MB) ESRI 9.3.1 File Geodatabase (510 MB)
Metadata	Metadata is located within the downloads.
Additional Information	Refer to the WQSDB Date Table for information regarding dates of indexing.
Geospatial and Attribute Linkage Information	Relational key: RAD source_featureid = WQS wqs_entity_id

Legacy ATTAINS Reach Indexed Datasets Archive

Pre-2015 303(d) Listed Impaired Waters Reach Indexed Dataset Archive
Download Extracted on May 1, 2015 Changelog (Excel)(20 K)	Shapefiles (153 MB) OGC GeoPackage (171 MB) ESRI 10.x File Geodatabase (98.9 MB) Attributes Only (Excel, 9 MB) Complete Archive File Geodatabase (318 MB)
Metadata	Metadata is located at data.gov, the United States government's open data website.
Additional Information	For this dataset as of 2014, Reach Address Database events have been indexed to NHDPlus v2.1 hydrology (previous versions utilized NHDPlus v1.0 hydrology). Fact Sheet (2 pp, 473 K, About PDF) Pollution Category summary document(21 pp, 604 K, About PDF)
Geospatial and Attribute Linkage Information	Use the provided ESRI_KEY for joining tables. Note that there is a many-to-many relationship between attributes and geospatial records.

Pre-2015 305(b) Waters As Assessed Reach Indexed Dataset Archive
Download Extracted on June 18, 2015 Changelog (Excel)(24 K)	Shapefiles (353 MB) OGC GeoPackage (406 MB) ESRI 10.x File Geodatabase (240 MB) Attributes Only (Excel, 48 MB) Complete Archive File Geodatabase (845 MB)
Metadata	Metadata is located at data.gov, the United States government's open data website.
Additional Information	For this dataset as of 2014, Reach Address Database events have been indexed to NHDPlus v2.1 hydrology (previous versions utilized NHDPlus v1.0 hydrology). 305(b) Assessed Waters by Assessed Uses Field Descriptions (docx) (21 KB)
Geospatial and Attribute Linkage Information	Use the provided ESRI_KEY for joining tables. Note that there is a many-to-many relationship between attributes and geospatial records.

2002 Impaired Waters Baseline Reach Indexed Dataset Archive
Download Extracted on February 7, 2014	Shapefiles (128 MB) ESRI 10.x File Geodatabase (84 MB)
Metadata	Metadata is located at data.gov, the United States government's open data website.
Additional Information	For this dataset as of 2014, Reach Address Database events have been indexed to NHDPlus v2.1 hydrology (previous versions utilized NHDPlus v1.0 hydrology). Fact Sheet(2 pp, 132 K, About PDF) Pollution Category summary document (21 pp, 604 K, About PDF)
Geospatial and Attribute Linkage Information	Selected attributes are included with the above downloads.

Watershed Boundaries for the 2002 Impaired Waters Baseline

Download

Extracted on March 18, 2010

Shapefiles (154 MB)

ESRI 9.3.1 File Geodatabase (83 MB)

Metadata

Metadata is located within the downloads.

Additional Information

Fact Sheet (2 pp, 244 K, About PDF)

Pre-2015 Impaired Waters with TMDLs Reach Indexed Dataset Archive
Download Extracted on May 1, 2015 Changelog (Excel)(20K)	Shapefiles (96 MB) OGC GeoPackage (110 MB) ESRI 10.x File Geodatabase (65 MB) Attributes Only (Excel, 8 MB)
Metadata	Metadata is located at data.gov, the United States government's open data website.
Additional Information	For this dataset as of 2014, Reach Address Database events have been indexed to NHDPlus v2.1 hydrology (previous versions utilized NHDPlus v1.0 hydrology). Fact Sheet(2 pp, 333 K, About PDF) Pollution Category summary document (21 pp, 604 K, About PDF)
Geospatial and Attribute Linkage Information	Use the provided ESRI_KEY for joining tables. Note that there is a many-to-many relationship between attributes and geospatial records.