ENHANCING THE CAPACITY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS) is committed to promoting the protection of Kentucky’s groundwater resources and the health of citizens utilizing this water for domestic purposes. The National Groundwater Association has estimated from 2005 United States Geological Survey (USGS) data that 444,000 Kentucky residents consume water from unregulated, privately owned groundwater wells. The Kentucky Geological Data Repository (KGDR) has data on approximately 52,000 domestic wells that would qualify as unregulated drinking water sources (UDWS). Four datasets have been targeted for entry into the KGDR: (1) Kentucky Division of Mine Reclamation and Enforcement; (2) USGS Kentucky Water Science Center; (3) Kentucky Division of Conservation/Farm Bureau; and (4) academic theses and dissertations. Each of these datasets contains groundwater-quality parameters that include ions and compounds. Following entry into the KGDR, the four datasets will be immediately available for use by public health researchers and the general public. Kentucky Geological Survey will complete the following steps: (1) locate, review and categorize groundwater-quality datasets from academic theses and dissertations that would be beneficial to the Private Well Initiative (PWI) and the KGDR; (2) initiate and complete the scanning process for the groundwater-quality datasets that were identified in the PWI pilot project for Kentucky, and scan any paper records identified in appropriate academic theses and dissertations; (3) import these scanned images into optical character recognition software (OCR) to capture raw data; (4) reformat any data already existing in digital format to match the KGDR data structure, and (5) complete the process of entering these data into the KGDR and releasing them to the public.