Mapping Water Contaminants in the Rio Grande through NM
Our team, Camilio Calabaza, Will Cushman, and Lauren Auer are creating a map of the major water contaminants in the Rio Grande as it runs through New Mexico. To accompany the map, we are also creating an index of the major water contaminants displayed by the map, the sources of these contaminants, and their health effects.
So far, we are still in the beginning stages of this project. Recently, we have acquired data sets from the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority. The people at this agency have been incredibly helpful and have also provided us with a pdf copy of the most recent “Surface Water Source Water Assessment”. This assessment provides a complete list of the major surface water contaminants in the Rio Grande, as well as their sources. This Assessment will be very helpful for our Contaminant Index.
The next stages of this project will involve compiling all of the data into ArcGIS and producing a map. Additionally, now that we have a copy of the “Surface Water Source Water Assessment” we can begin re-organizing the information into a concise index to accompany our map. Our group still needs to discuss how we would like to display our project at the Expo on April 18th, but we should have more ideas about this as we get deeper into the project.
For our class facilitation, Kate Mendoza, the Water Resource Specialist at the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority will be coming to speak to our class this Thursday about “the Water Authority’s source water protection efforts with an eye towards threats to our surface water resources”. We are eager to have her, and hope that her presentation will be insightful for our group, as well as the other two groups in the class.
We are happy to currently have the sources we need for this project, and look forward to seeing how the map and index turn out!
