Wild & Scenic River Proximity Screener — Section 7 Flag

Batch coordinate screener for proximity to designated National Wild & Scenic Rivers (WSR). Give it a list of sites (lat/lon) and it returns, for each site, the nearest designated Wild & Scenic River corridor — river name, segment classification (Wild / Scenic / Recreational), managing/administering agency, and the nearest-distance — plus a wsr_section7_flag that fires when a designated river lies within your search radius.

Under Section 7 of the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act, a federally assisted water-resources project — a dam, diversion, bank stabilization, FERC hydro license, bridge, or dredge-and-fill — that is on or directly affecting a designated river requires a free-flow determination. This actor is a fast first-pass screen for that exposure across a whole portfolio of sites.

Data is the multi-agency USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse National Wild & Scenic River Segments service (USFS / NPS / BLM / FWS, public domain). There are 200+ designated rivers across 39 states and Puerto Rico.

Who it's for

• Hydropower / energy / water-resources developers — FERC licensing and dam/diversion siting where a WSR designation can bar or complicate a project.
• Dredge-and-fill / marine / infrastructure contractors — Section 404 / Section 7 exposure screening.
• NEPA & environmental consultants — batch pre-screen candidate sites for WSR conflicts before a full review.
• Land, recreation, real-estate & conservation — flag parcels adjacent to a protected free-flowing river.
• AI agents & data pipelines — a clean, chainable geospatial due-diligence tool.

Example input

{
  "assets": [
    { "lat": 42.65, "lon": -123.58, "label": "Rogue River, OR", "radius": 5000 },
    { "lat": 39.7392, "lon": -104.9903, "label": "Denver, CO", "radius": 5000 }
  ],
  "radiusMeters": 5000,
  "maxResults": 500
}

Each asset is { lat, lon, label?, radius? } (radius in meters, optional per-asset override). "lat,lon" strings and [lat, lon] arrays are also accepted. One dataset row (one billed result) is produced per asset.

Verified sample run

A real 6-site run (2026-07-21, 5000 m radius) returned 6 rows and 0 errors:

Asset	Nearest river	Class	Agency	Distance	Section 7 flag
Rogue River, OR	Rogue Wild and Scenic River	Wild	USFS + BLM	0.2596 mi	true
Salmon River, ID	Salmon Wild and Scenic River	Wild	USFS	0.3321 mi	true
Rio Grande, NM	Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River	Wild	USFS + BLM	0.5811 mi	true
Upper Delaware River, NY/PA	Delaware Wild and Scenic River	Scenic	Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River, NPS	0.3477 mi	true
Chattooga River, GA/SC	Chattooga Wild and Scenic River	Wild	USFS	0.0981 mi	true
Denver, CO (control)	no river within radius	—	—	—	false

The control point returned a clean, billed "no WSR conflict" row rather than an error. This exact run is published as the actor's example task, so you can open it and re-run it as-is.

Output fields

Field	Description
asset_label, asset_lat, asset_lon	The screened site.
search_radius_meters	Radius used for this asset.
nearest_river_name / nearest_river_shortname	Nearest designated Wild & Scenic River within the radius.
nearest_segment_classification	Wild / Scenic / Recreational classification of the nearest segment.
nearest_segment_agency	Administering agency code of the nearest segment (BLM, USFS, NPS, FWS).
administering_agencies	Managing/administering agencies for the whole corridor.
nearest_distance_miles / nearest_distance_km	Nearest-point-on-line distance to the corridor.
nearest_river_state	State of the nearest segment.
nearest_river_orvs	Outstandingly Remarkable Values (fish, scenery, recreation, etc.).
nearest_segment_begin / nearest_segment_end	Reach endpoints of the nearest segment.
on_designated_river	True when the site sits essentially on the corridor.
rivers_within_radius, segments_within_radius	Counts within the radius.
classifications_within_radius	Distinct classifications present (Wild > Scenic > Recreational).
wsr_section7_flag	True when a designated river is within the radius (Section 7 screening flag).
error, checked_at, source_url	Diagnostics + provenance.

Use as an MCP tool

This actor is callable by AI agents (Claude, Cursor, etc.) via mcp.apify.com. The field-level output descriptions make it a clean, chainable geospatial due-diligence tool: feed it candidate coordinates and it returns a structured Wild & Scenic River proximity + Section 7 verdict per site.

FAQ

Is this legal advice or a permit determination? No. wsr_section7_flag is an advisory proximity screen. A formal Section 7(a) free-flow determination is made by the administering agency.

How is distance measured? Nearest-point-on-line (point-to-segment) distance from your coordinate to the river corridor polyline, in miles and kilometers.

What counts as "within range"? Any designated Wild & Scenic River corridor within your radius (meters). Default 5000 m (~3.1 miles); up to ~50 miles.

Which rivers are covered? All congressionally / secretarially designated National Wild & Scenic Rivers in the USFS multi-agency dataset (USFS, NPS, BLM, FWS) — 200+ rivers across 39 states + Puerto Rico.

What if a site has no river nearby? You still get a billed row with wsr_section7_flag: false and null river fields — a clean "no WSR conflict" record.

Related screeners

This actor is part of a family of single-coordinate federal due-diligence screeners that all take the same assets[]{lat,lon,label} input shape, so you can run several over the same site list and join the results per site.

• Site Due Diligence Bundle — 15 federal overlays for one coordinate in a single call.
• EPA Impaired Waters 303(d) Screener — Clean Water Act 303(d) impaired waters near the site.
• FWS Critical Habitat Screener — ESA Section 7 designated critical habitat.
• USACE Levee Flood Risk Screener — leveed-area flood risk from the National Levee Database.
• National Register of Historic Places Screener — listed historic properties and districts, NHPA Section 106 flag.
• Tribal Land Jurisdiction Screener — reservation / trust land and THPO consultation flag.

Pricing

Pay-per-result: one billed row per screened asset. Empty/no-conflict sites still return a row.

Source: USFS EDW National Wild & Scenic River Segments MapServer (layers 0 corridor + 1 segments). Public-domain federal data. This tool is informational and not a substitute for an agency determination.