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Final 2010 305(b)/303(d) Water Quality
Assessment Integrated Report

Approved by EPA on February 9, 2011

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) released the Final 2010 305(b)/303(d) Water Quality Assessment Integrated Report (Integrated Report) on February 9, 2011. The 2010 Integrated Report is a summary of the water quality conditions in Virginia from January 1, 2003 through December 31, 2008. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality develops and submits this report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency every even-numbered year.

The report satisfies the requirements of the U.S. Clean Water Act sections 305(b) and 303(d) and the Virginia Water Quality Monitoring, Information and Restoration Act. The goals of Virginia's water quality assessment program are to determine whether waters meet water quality standards, and to establish a schedule to restore waters with impaired water quality.

Water quality standards designate uses for waters. There are six designated uses for surface waters in Virginia:

  • aquatic life
  • fish consumption
  • public water supplies (where applicable)
  • shellfishing
  • swimming (recreation)
  • wildlife

Additionally, several subcategories of aquatic life use have been adopted for the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries. The standards define the water quality needed to support each of these uses. If a water body contains more contamination than allowed by water quality standards, it will not support one or more of its designated uses. Such waters have "impaired" water quality. In most cases, a cleanup plan (called a "total maximum daily load") must be developed and implemented to restore impaired waters.

The draft Integrated Report was released on August 23 and made available for public comment through September 24, 2010. Comments were received from the public and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In response to comments, the report was revised and resubmitted to EPA on December 10, 2010 and approved on February 9, 2011. The Public Comments and Response document contains comments received on the draft report and DEQ’s responses.

The Summary Presentation of the Final 2010 Water Quality Assessment contains statistics revised since it was given at the webinar in August. The answers to the questions posed at the webinar can be accessed in the FAQ document.

Copies of the final report, public comments and responses, revised summary presentation, GIS data and associated maps are all on a CD which can be ordered at no charge by sending an e-mail request.

The entire Final 2010 305(b)/303(d) Water Quality Assessment Integrated Report is a 35 MB bookmarked PDF document. You may wish to right-click on the link and click "Save Target As..." to save the document to your computer or you may scroll down to view and download the much smaller individual chapters.

All chapters of the report and the supplemental files are PDF documents. Please visit the website help page if you are unable to view these documents.

Document Cover

Inside Cover

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

i. Acknowledgements
ii-iii. List of Figures
iv-vi. List of Tables
vii-viii. Introduction

Part I Executive Summary

Part II Surface Water Monitoring and Assessment

Part III Results of 2010 Water Quality Assessment

Part IV Non-Point Source Assessment

Part V Ground Water Assessment

Part VI State Background Information and Water Quality Program Descriptions

Part VII Appendices

Appendix A Fact Sheets for Category 5 Waters (all basins)

Appendix B Clean Water Act References
Appendix C List of Significant Lakes
Appendix D Data Sets Considered for 2010 Assessment
Appendix E Current Status of TMDL Development in Virginia
Appendix F 2010 Monitoring Station List (all Stations and Key)

STATEWIDE, BASIN and CHESAPEAKE BAY MAPS - Electronic versions of the assessment maps are available for download/viewing. Each map is a PDF between .5 MB and 5 MB formatted to fit on an 11x17 page. You may wish to right-click and select "Save Target As..." to save the maps to your computer. For more detailed information on impaired waters identified on these maps, please use the Virginia Environmental Geographic Information Systems (VEGIS) application.

STATEWIDE MAPS: (some are new)

BASIN MAPS:

CHESAPEAKE BAY MAPS:

Attention GIS users:

The GIS data used in the production of the Integrated Report is available for download (33.5 MB zip archive). Please note that you must have special GIS software to view this data. This data is also available on the final Integrated Report CD and as a feature map service. For more information on how to obtain this data via CD or access to the map feature service, please contact Cleo Stevens via email or phone (804) 698-4191.

Interactive Mapping

Virginia Environmental Geographic Information Systems (VEGIS) - The impaired waters identified in this report can be viewed using DEQ's online GIS application.

2010 Assessment Database GIS Application - Allows users to zoom to an area of interest and retrieve information on any waters assessed in this 305(b)/303(d) Report.

The Final 2010 305(b)/303(d) Water Quality Assessment Guidance Manual, released April 7, 2010, is also available for download.

Additional Information:

Many of the documents on this page are in Adobe® PDF format. Please visit DEQ's website help page to download Adobe Reader.