Understanding how water is used across the Potomac basin is an important part of planning for a reliable and resilient water supply. Because water does not follow political boundaries, basin-wide planning requires looking across jurisdictions to understand where water is withdrawn, how much is used, what it is used for, and how those uses change over time.

Explore Basin-Wide Water Use

Each of the Potomac basin jurisdictions requires water users that meet certain criteria to report information about their water withdrawals, referred to here as reported water use. ICPRB’s interactive basin-wide water use tool brings together these reported water withdrawal data from across the Potomac basin. Use the tool to explore water use by location, water source, and type of use and to see how reported water use has changed over time.

Water Use Tool

The tool provides a basin-wide view of water use while recognizing that reporting requirements and available data differ among jurisdictions. ICPRB plans to expand the tool over time with additional information, including estimates of unreported and consumptive water use, to provide a more complete, interactive resource for exploring water use across the Potomac basin.

One Basin, One Future

Development of a basin-wide understanding of water use is part of the Potomac River Basin Comprehensive Water Resources Plan, adopted by ICPRB in 2018. The plan recognized that sustainable water resources planning requires consideration of water uses across political boundaries and called for improved information about the locations, amounts, and uses of surface and groundwater throughout the basin.

The 2023 Updates to the Comprehensive Plan continued that work, calling for improvements to ICPRB’s basin-wide withdrawal and consumptive use database, including tools for sharing and exploring aggregate water-use information.

This work supports the Comprehensive Plan’s desired outcome that the diverse users of the basin’s water resources have clean, reliable, and resilient water resources for current and future generations.

Explore this work and other projects advancing the Comprehensive Plan through ICPRB’s One Basin, One Future collection.

Learn More About Basin-Wide Water Use

ICPRB has developed a series of analyses to improve our understanding of reported and unreported water use, consumptive use, and future water demands across the Potomac basin.

• Evaluation of Reported and Unreported Water Uses in Various Sectors of the Potomac Basin for the Year 2017 (2024)
• Potomac Basin Trends in Water Use (2024)
• Potomac Basin Reported Water Use (2022)
• Potomac Basin Unreported Water Use (2021) and  Supplemental Table  (2021)

Acknowledgements

ICPRB gratefully acknowledges the Potomac basin jurisdictions for their collaboration and expertise in developing the basin-wide reported water use dataset and interactive viewer. We also thank the CO-OP water suppliers for their contributions of water use data.

This work was developed in support of the Potomac River Basin Comprehensive Water Resources Plan, with the guidance and support of the Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee and the ICPRB Commissioners.