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TCEQ unveils new Drinking Water Viewer with downloadable schedules and sample data
Summary
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality demonstrated a public Drinking Water Viewer that will replace Drinking Water Watch by year-end, offering downloadable schedules, sample results, violation and enforcement detail, and an exportable yearly schedule snapshot for systems and consultants.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality showcased its new Drinking Water Viewer in a demonstration during the third-quarter Drinking Water Advisory Work Group meeting, saying the viewer will replace the current Drinking Water Watch and be available to the public soon.
The new tool consolidates a system-level overview, contact information, treatment and source details, sampling point lists, monitoring schedules and historical sample results. "This is the landing page here," explained Ryland Fields during the demonstration, then walked attendees through features that allow users to export contact lists, sampling-point inventories and sample results to Excel and to save a PDF snapshot of yearly sample schedules.
Program staff said the viewer will be available publicly and Drinking Water Watch will remain online through the end of the year. Steven Swarenga, who first announced the viewer to the group, said the agency expects to roll the platform out in about two weeks from the demonstration and will notify the work group when it goes live. "We are very excited to roll this out," he said.
Fields demonstrated how users can search by water system, view a flow diagram, inspect sampling-point inventories and download coliform and chemical sample results with date-range filters. The viewer also displays compliance schedules, violations and enforcement actions tied to particular events, and a status summary that shows resolved and unresolved items.
The tool includes contextual help (question-mark tooltips) and an export function for schedules and results intended to reduce manual public records requests and make it easier for systems, consultants and researchers to run their own analyses. Steven Swarenga said the agency is exploring CCR-generation options offered by the contractor but said the final CCR workflow may differ from the current Drinking Water Watch CCR helper.
The agency plans to demo the Viewer at the upcoming Public Drinking Water Conference. Systems were reminded that schedules and monitoring data shown in the Viewer are a live reflection of what is entered into agency data systems and that any missing or delayed schedules are because staff must complete compliance calculations or data entry first.
The work group asked whether the Viewer would push automatic schedule-change notifications to system contacts; Fields and staff said the Viewer itself will not send automated schedule-change emails, but all displayed data can be downloaded and shared by systems.
The TCEQ said it will send an announcement to the work group when the Viewer is live and will have staff on-site at the Public Drinking Water Conference to guide users through the tool.
Ending: The Viewer is intended to replace Drinking Water Watch with a more modern, exportable interface and to provide public access to schedules, sample data and enforcement status. The TCEQ encouraged users to test the tool during its rollout and will post follow-up guidance and links once the Viewer is in production.
