Citizen Water Quality Monitoring. Residents in the watershed know that declining water quality means our waters are not always safe to swim, the fish are contaminated, and pollution occurs under color of lawful permits issued by the authorities. Boaters and waterfront landowners, in particular, pay attention to water conditions and polluting problems near their own homes, docks, and marinas. But while most users of the river have a good local sense of how conditions in the river appear at any given time, they often have no relative sense of how local conditions relate to the overall health and vitality of the river system. Grassroots monitoring of local surface water offers a great opportunity for citizens to become empowered, to add objectivity to their own efforts at advocacy, and to promote better stewardship and the sense that the condition of the entire river is just as important as the segment in their own backyard. Working with several funders, in 2005 the Patuxent Riverkeeper started to develop a citizen water quality monitoring data collection system that is published on the World Wide Web. The software allows registered users to obtain training and basic equipment to do their own sampling. They are also able to log onto the public web site (www.pwqi.net) and upload their findings so that others can compare, learn, and share. The system is designed to accept monitoring results that citizens can reasonably be expected to test for with minimal training and inexpensive equipment. A partnership with The University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Biological Labs and the Morgan State Estuarine Research Center has supplied extensive technical and science-based guidance in the creation of this unique citizen empowerment tool.
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