This feature class is part of a geodatabase designed for use by the Colonias Monitoring Program, which involves the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), The Office of the Attorney General of Texas (OAG), The Office of the Texas Secretary of State (SOS) and the Mexican Instituto Nacional de Estadística Geografía e Informática (INEGI). The overall goal of the program is to create an Internet-enabled geographic information system (GIS) that will help cities along the United States/Mexico border manage issues related to urban growth and low-income housing developments. More about this program is located at: <http://tx.usgs.gov/geography/FS2004-3070_revised.pdf>. This feature class contains unofficial boundaries of colonias in Texas within the U.S. Geological Survey's Border Environmental Health Initiative's (BEHI) study area that are recognized by the Economically Distressed Areas Program (EDAP)established by the 71st Texas Legislature. These are areas whose water supply or wastewater systems do not meet minimum state standards, do not have the financial resources to provide services to meet those needs, and had an established residential subdivision as of June 1, 1989. Also, various identification details are included (Name, Alternate Name(s), ID number, and the source of the boundary). To create this feature class, the U.S. Geological Survey worked very closely with the OAG, Maverick County Appraisal District (MCAD) and the El Paso County Appraisal District (EPCAD). The original GIS boundaries for colonias in this dataset were supplied by the OAG, however in El Paso and Maverick counties the USGS improved the boundaries through the use of local county appraisal district data. Due to limitations in older technologies, the original OAG boundaries were not aligned to the 2004 National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery. The goal of the improvements performed in El Paso and Maverick counties was to create boundaries that were aligned to the 2004 NAIP imagery. For colonias in El Paso and Maverick counties that were identified by the OAG's data, but not identified by the local appraisal district data, the original OAG boundaries are used. Also, for all the other Texas counties, the original OAG boundaries are used.
To provide a dataset containing the boundaries of and infrastructure information about colonias along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The following paragraph only applies to the boundaries in El Paso and Maverick counties, where the USGS modified and improved data that were supplied by the OAG: In cases where a colonia's boundary was not available in the county appraisal district data, the boundary from the Office of the Attorney General of Texas was used. Some cases required further manipulation of the boundaries in order to create a match to the underlying 2004 NAIP imagery. For these cases, plat maps were referenced (when available), and the final boundaries were reviewed by U.S. Geological Survey and Office of the Attorney General of Texas personnel.
ground condition
There is no guarantee concerning the accuracy of these data. Users should be aware that temporal changes may have occurred since this dataset was collected and that some parts of these data may no longer represent actual surface conditions. Users should not use this data for critical applications without a full awareness of its limitations. Acknowledgement of the originating agencies would be appreciated in products derived from these data. Any user who modifies the data is obligated to describe the types of modifications they perform. User specifically agrees not to misrepresent the data, nor to imply that changes made were approved or endorsed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Please refer to <http://www.usgs.gov/privacy.html> for the USGS disclaimer.
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All attributes in this dataset were imported directly from one of three sources: 1) Identification attributes (Name, alternate names, and TWDB ID#) were imported from the EDAP database created by the TWDB. 2) Platting attributes (Is_Platted) were also imported from the EDAP database, but they were supplied to EDAP by the OAG. 3) All other attributes were imported from the Colonia Health Infrastructure Platting Status tool (CHIPS), which was created by the USGS but populated by the SOS. Data imported from CHIPS were collected in 2006, but ground conditions may have changed since then. Null values indicate a colonia that was not included in CHIPS.
For El Paso and Maverick county colonias, every colonia was visually inspected to ensure that there were no perceptible errors with the boundaries. Since the goal was to improve colonia boundaries to align themselves with 2004 NAIP imagery when viewed at a scale of 1:2,000, topology checks were not performed to prevent overlap. However, when digitizing, efforts were taken to ensure that coinciding boundaries had the same defined vertices. Thus any overlap that occurs will be minor and imperceptible to the naked eye. For all other counties, data were imported from the OAG supplied data and left as is. As a result, any errors in the original data still persist in this dataset for all counties other than El Paso and Maverick.
This dataset includes all of the EDAP communities with GIS boundaries provided to us from the TWDB. This includes communities identified in 2002 by the OAG, and additional communities identified by a private contractor hired by the TWDB in 2003.
These colonia boundaries were created to line up with 2004 NAIP imagery at scales of 1:2000 or smaller.
This file contained the boundaries of individual parcels in El Paso County. Many of the colonia boundaries in El Paso County, Texas were derived from these parcel boundaries.
This text file contains the attributes of the parcels, e.g., the colonia the parcel belongs to. These attributes were related to the theme2xx shapefile by the PIDN field, which allowed us to extract parcels by colonia. When all parcels within a colonia were extracted, it allowed us to determine the entire colonia's boundary.
The names and locations of the colonias within our study area were derived from these data of EDAP recognized subdivisions. These are areas whose water supply or wastewater systems do not meet minimum state standards, do not have the financial resources to provide services to meet those needs, and had an established residential subdivision as of June 1, 1989. This dataset includes all of the EDAP communities with GIS boundaries provided to us from the TWDB. This includes communities identified in 2002 by the OAG, and additional communities identified by a private contractor hired by the TWDB in 2003.
This is the imagery that was used to align colonia boundaries.
For Texas Senate Bill 827 (SB 827), six counties' colonias were studied in an effort to track the progress of state-funded projects whose goal was to improve colonia infrastructure. These data were entered into CHIPS, which was used to analyze the status of colonias in Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, Webb, Maverick, and El Paso County.
This report provided background information on the colonias and the processes used to populate CHIPS.
This shapefile contains the subdivision boundaries used by the Maverick County Appraisal District. At the time that these data were collected, the work was contracted out to True Automation (http://trueautomation.com).
This dataset contains the colonia boundaries that were improved by the USGS in Maverick County.
This feature class contains the colonia boundaries in El Paso County that were updated by the U.S. Geological Survey.
This dataset was created by aggregating three existing datasets into one. For detailed process steps for the original three datasets, please visit: "http://borderhealth.cr.usgs.gov/datalayers.html" and download the colonias dataset located under the "places" category. This dataset includes the three original feature classes used to create this one, as well as their corresponding metadata.
Metadata imported.
Length of feature in internal units.
ESRI
Area of feature in internal units squared.
ESRI
The unique identifier of each colonia that is used by the state of Texas.
TWDB
Internal feature number.
ESRI
The name of the colonia.
TWDB
The color classification of the colonia. Red denotes a colonia that lacks adequate wastewater disposal, lacks a potable water supply, or is not platted. Yellow denotes platted colonias with a potable water supply and adequate wastewater, but have inadequate trash collection, unpaved roads, or inadequate drainage. Green colonias denote platted colonias that have a potable water supply, adequate wastewater disposal, adequate trash collection, paved roads that are passable in all weather conditions, and adequate drainage.
SOS
Whether or not the colonias is platted.
OAG
Whether or not the entire colonia has an adquate potable water supply.
SOS
Feature geometry.
ESRI
The provider of the boundary. The USGS and OAG are cited for boundaries that were improved in El Paso and Maverick counties. The OAG is cited for all other boundaries.
USGS
Whether or not the colonia suffers from inadequate wastewater disposal.
SOS
Whether or not a colonia has adequate trash collection services.
SOS
Whether or not the roads in the colonia are paved.
SOS
Whether or not the colonia floods during rainfall. This definition is subject to interpretation, for more background please refer to SOS employees and/or the cited report written by the SOS that is titled, "Tracking the Progress of State-funded Projects that Benefit Colonias."
SOS
Whether or not the roads in the colonia are passable in all weather conditions. This definition is subject to interpretation, for more background please refer to SOS employees and/or the cited report written by the SOS that is titled, "Tracking the Progress of State-funded Projects that Benefit Colonias."
SOS
The data you have secured from the USGS database, identified as Colonias_IMS, have not received Director's approval and as such are provisional and subject to revision. The data area released on the condition that neither the USGS, its cooperators, nor the United States Government may be held liable for any damages resulting form its authorized or unauthorized use.
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