Water Quality

Clean water supports fish, wildlife, and human health, but development and human activities can degrade water quality in a variety of ways. Designing and implementing monitoring plans helps us understand the impacts of human activity on water quality and the sources of pollution so they can be addressed. Heavy metals, oils, bacteria, excess sediment, salt, and litter are common problems that we look out for, and monitoring helps us narrow down where and when pollution is a problem, and figure out how to limit the source or treat polluted water before it reaches streams, for example with green stormwater infrastructure.