Will DOGE Evaporate Crucial Water Data?

U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist Greg Clark measures streamflow on Government Gulch Creek, a tributary to the Coeur d'Alene River in northern Idaho. Photo: USGS/Deena Green, via Flickr Creative Commons (United States government work).

Reporter’s Toolbox: Will DOGE Evaporate Crucial Water Data?

By Joseph A. Davis

Another key data tool for environmental journalists has been marked for disappearance by the Trump administration. This one could be hard to rescue. For decades, the U.S. Geological Survey's water data has been saving lives. Its deletion could cost dollars and lives.

Toolbox would rather be telling you about data you can use. Under Trump 2.0, times have changed. The good news is that it’s not quite gone yet. But it will be — without a huge rescue.

The USGS is the main federal agency tracking streamflow. It does this with a large network of gauges that measure streamflow all over the United States. There are more than 11,850 of them. They have to be expertly built, monitored and maintained.

To do this work, USGS also has a network of water science centers, which not only read the gauges but also disseminate the measurements to state and local agencies dealing with floods and droughts. Many of the gauges report via telemetry in near-real time.

You can see the data here. It is still there. For now.

What brought this to public notice was a list of leases that the Trump USGS (or DOGE) will not renew. It includes 25 USGS water science centers. That would make no sense unless the Trump administration intended to abolish the streamflow data collection program altogether.

 

Why we need this data

When massive downpours and snowmelts happen, water in streams and rivers can rise suddenly, violently and overwhelmingly. This can harm both people and property.

 

Streamflow gauges can warn

governments — which can warn

vulnerable people to get out of the way.

 

Streamflow gauges can warn governments — which can warn vulnerable people to get out of the way. Often, the aftermath of flooding includes pollution and pathogens.

Unusually low streamflow is also a big problem. It’s called drought. Farmers and drinking water systems suffer.

With climate change going full bore across much of the United States, drought is a serious issue. Look at the water supply problems in the seven states that rely on the Colorado River. The Colorado is used for irrigation, hydropower, drinking water and recreation, among other things. On the Mississippi system, low flow from drought can slow or stop shipping of bulk commodities like grain.

Drought causes various environmental problems. One is wildfires. Another is harm to fisheries, especially salmonids and other species that migrate upstream to spawn. Low flow can rob local drinking water systems of the supply they need, especially where there is no reservoir. Low water sometimes concentrates pollutants discharged into a stream. And low streamflow often leads to overpumping of groundwater.

There is nothing political about this data — USGS is a purely scientific agency with no regulatory duties at all. Even Project 2025, the conservative blueprint, did not call for removing this data.

Joseph A. Davis is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet, Reporter's Toolbox and Issue Backgrounder, and curates SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday and @EJTodayNews. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog opinion column.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 10, No. 23. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.