OFFICIAL SITE OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

DGS10-3 New Jersey Water Transfer Model Withdrawal, Use, and Return Data Summaries

Abstract

This New Jersey Geological and Water Survey (NJGWS) Digital Geodata Series (DGS) publication is a set of five Microsoft Access™ databases that summarize information contained in the New Jersey Water Transfer Data Model (NJWaTr). The databases contain measured and estimated monthly withdrawal, use and return volumes by site. The five databases cover: 1) withdrawals by HUC14 drainage basin, 2) withdrawals by municipality, 3) use by site, 4) returns by HUC14 drainage basin, and 5) returns by municipality. Attribute data such as site owner, permit number, water use, water source, watershed name, and municipality are included with each database. Table and field description information is also included with each database. The databases do not contain site latitude and longitude locations.

The underlying data are available online from multiple New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) programs through DataMiner (www.nj.gov/dep/opra/). This data is collected from each program, quality assured, enhanced, and then reformatted by NJGS before it is loaded into NJWaTr. NJGS’s QA/QC process determines the best estimate of actual water use for each individual site, and as a result these volumes may be different from other NJDEP sources which have different end uses and purposes. The NJWaTr data is simplified through a series of queries into the tables found in this publication.

The HUC14 drainage basin databases can be used for watershed modeling, planning, or similar analyses. The municipal level databases can be used for municipal and county level planning or summary exercises. The use by site database is included to account for the effects of storage (e.g. reservoir or pumped storage) and bulk water transfers that occur primarily with public water systems that can shift where and when withdrawals are used.

The databases contain 1990 through 2020 monthly data.