Crowd-sourced water quality map
WaterGoodness is a new site allowing users to share and find water quality reports across the United States. The site combines water quality and pollution data from a variety of government sources with visitor reports of their local water quality. The site's intentions are noble, but the mashup concept is a bit unworkable at the national level - you need to zoom in several levels to your local area to be able to click any of the data points. In addition, some more context would be good: apparently the beach closest to my house has a contamination rate of 23% and Illinois has a tap water contaminant factor of 90 per EWG -- but I have no idea what those figures mean other than they are bad because they are colored red. As an entrant in the Sunlight Labs Apps for America contest, hopefully the site creators will resolve some of these minor issues soon - overall the site is a very interesting resource and a great use of public participation GIS!
