This application is designed to increase understanding and awareness of drought risk for public water systems in West Virginia. It is intended to support planning and decision-making of water operators and government agencies in accordance with drought response guidelines from the West Virginia Division of Emergency Management, but not in a regulatory manner. The estimates and assumptions inherent in this approach are best used as a screening tool. For greatest accuracy, in-situ measurements and verification of withdrawal rates, water supply storage, and streamflow are recommended.

Note on National Water Model usage:
By incorporating the National Water Model short-range forecasts, this application also carries any assumptions, limitations, uncertainty, or errors present in the National Water Model and the datasets and models it is built upon. The current version of the National Water Model is not an official river level forecast.

Note on weirs and reservoirs:
In this tool and the associated report, a "reservoir" suggests a documented impoundment and a "weir" suggests a smaller in-stream control structure that may deepen a particular pool. There are 24 public water systems noted to withdraw from reservoirs and 18 systems withdrawing from weirs. These structures are documented in this tool to provide additional context for high withdrawal rates, which could be sustained during low-flow scenarios given enough water storage. This tool does not directly estimate or account for the amount of water storage available in these impoundments. As a result, there may be greater uncertainty associated with estimates of the percent of streamflow withdrawn by public water systems withdrawing from source waters with on-stream storage.

Other limitations and assumptions:
The application does not account for surface water withdrawals that may be occurring upstream of an individual public water system intake.

Using the Map and Navigating the Page

1. Use the navigation bar on the top right to jump to different sections of the page.
2. Use the "+" or "-" zoom control buttons on the top left to zoom in or out on the map, respectively.
3. Use the home button on the left, underneath the zoom controls, to return to the original extent of the map.
4. Use the Map Controls on the bottom left to hide or show the Map Information Panel (see #6) and change the boundary within which the map information is aggregated. Information can be viewed by county boundary or watershed boundary (representing the 10-digit Hydrologic Unit within which a public water system is located).
5. The Map Information Panel on the right will populate with information for public water systems located within a county or watershed when a county or watershed with information available is clicked on the map. Note that counties or watersheds with multiple public water systems are colored by the status of the public water system withdrawing the greatest percent of estimated streamflow, as demonstrated in the example below:

Using the Data Table

1. Use the "Copy" or "Download" buttons on the top left to grab the data from the table for use outside of the application.
2. Use the record selector to change the number of data records ("entries") shown at once in the table.
3. The Data Table shares all of the same information contained within the map. Records are by default ordered from highest to lowest percent of estimated streamflow withdrawn. Resort the records in ascending or descending order based on a different column using the arrows to the right of the column headers.
4. Use the pagination buttons on the bottom right to view additional table entries.