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- Monitoring Articles and News |
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MONITORING ARTICLES
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| Baseline Monitoring Determination (Dec '04) |
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By Dick Lacher, Adapted from SPC Simplified Practical Steps to Quality
We take and record data because we would like to know the "State" of our river. Once we have some data, we can chart it or squint our eyes and say "Looks good/bad to me." Either statement requires some additional information if we want to be taken seriously. That is, we need to do some analysis of the data.
A good initial statistical approach is to test our data to see if our process (the river) is operating in statistical control and behaving in a stable and predictable manner. This will be our baseline and is determined by observing both the data and it's variability. We do this with control charts. Example of the Big Fork River Board determined baseline.
When we find that our data is in control, the only variation is due to chance causes. If the data does not meet standards then we can be confident that when we make changes, or clean up some source, the new results will be as a result of the changes. If the process was not in statistical control, the changes might be due to chance.
Now if the data are not in statistical control, it means that an assignable cause is present and probably can be found and corrected.
Again, when the data are in control and within standards, watch for trends which might take the data out of standards. When the data are outside the control limits, look for causes and correct. If the data are in control and outside standards you have a river that is consistent but has problems. You can try measures to bring the river within standards and be confident that if the measures work they were the result of your efforts.
Example of the Big Fork River water quality control chart for individual data & ranges data.
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| Bacteria Monitoring - The Basics (Dec '04) |
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By Geoff Dates, River Network
When you swim in lakes and streams, you run the risk of swallowing water laced with disease-causing organisms. So, what is the risk of getting sick at your favorite swimming hole? That's where bacteria monitoring comes in.
Before we start in on the danger of bacteria, it's important to remember that many bacteria perform essential functions in nature, such as decomposition, carbon cycling, and nitrogen cycling.
What Are Fecal Bacteria and Why Are They Important?
When people drink, play in, or water their crops with contaminated water, they are exposed to not only bacteria, but other pathogens that are found in human waste, including viruses (like influenza) and protozoans (like cryptosporidium).
Bacteria are single-celled microorganisms, some of which are used as indicators of the presence of disease-causing organisms (pathogens). Because it's too difficult to test for the pathogens themselves (there are too many and they tend to mutate more quickly than tests can be developed), members of two bacteria groups, coliforms and fecal streptococci, are used as indicators of possible sewage contamination. Although they are generally not harmful themselves, they indicate the possible presence of disease causing organisms that live in human and animal digestive systems and are found in their feces. If you find high levels of fecal indicator bacteria in your swimming hole, jumping in may be a health risk.
Monitoring bacteria is challenging: There are many that are naturally-occurring in surface water. There are many sources of water contamination:
- Malfunctioning septic tanks
- Untreated/poorly treated wastewater
- Combined sewer overflows
- Leaking sewer lines
- Polluted runoff
- Wildlife
A good indicator bacteria needs to:
- be there all the time
- be consistently and exclusively associated with human feces
- be easily and quickly detected
- able to be cultured predictably and reliably
- mimic the survival of pathogens
- provide a good association with health risk
Indicator Bacteria Types and What They Can Tell You
The most commonly tested fecal bacteria indicators are the groups total coliforms, fecal coliforms, and fecal streptococci. All are comprised of a number of species of bacteria that share common characteristics such as shape, habitat, or behavior. Within these groups, enterococci and Escherichia coli (E. coli) are tested. E. coli is a single species in the fecal coliform group.
Which bacteria you test for depends on what you want to know. Do you want to know whether swimming in your stream poses a health risk? Do you want to know whether your stream is meeting state water quality standards?
Studies conducted by EPA to determine the correlation between different bacterial indicators and the occurrence of digestive system illness at swimming beaches suggest that the best indicators of health risk from recreational water contact in fresh water are E. coli and enterococci. Interestingly, fecal coliforms as a group were determined to be a poor indicator of the risk of digestive system illness. However, many states continue to use fecal coliforms as their primary health risk indicator.
If your state still uses fecal coliforms, you should monitor them if you want to know whether the water meets the state water quality standards, However, if you want to know the health risk from recreational water contact, consider testing for E. coli.
In addition to bacteria testing, some groups have been looking at other indicators of the presence of sewage, such as optical brighteners used in many detergents. Still others are focused on identifying the source of the bacteria by phenotyping or genotyping, very complex and expensive procedures that look for a genetic "signature" of a particular critter.
Which Method?
Bacteria can be difficult to analyze, even in a laboratory. This is primarily because the procedures are complex and absolutely sterile conditions are required. There are two basic methods for analyzing water samples for bacteria:
- The membrane filtration method involves filtering water sample using standard filters, placing each filter on a nutrient medium in a petri plate, incubating the plates at a specified temperature and time period, and then counting the colonies that have grown on the filter. This method varies for different bacteria types. Some tests use high temperature incubation or substances in the medium to inhibit the growth of unwanted colonies. Others use dyes that are keyed to the byproducts produced when the bacteria consume nutrients. Examples include the mFC method for fecal coliform, mTEC for E. coli, and MI for total coliforms and E. coli, and EasyGel. In any case, bacteria are counted and reported as colony forming units (cfu) per 100 mL.
- The multiple-tube fermentation method involves adding specified quantities of the water sample to tubes containing a nutrient broth, incubating the tubes at a specified temperature for a specified time period, and then looking for the development of gas and/or turbidity that the bacteria produce. The presence or absence of gas in each tube is used to calculate an index known as the Most Probable Number (MPN). A recent variation on this is the Quanti-Tray Method.
There are many variations on these two basic methods.
Bacteria results are usually compared with state water quality criteria, which describe levels, which should not be exceeded for different forms of recreation or drinking water. Monitoring for fecal bacteria, and using these criteria as benchmarks, might enable your group to help people decide whether it's safe to jump in.
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| Why Monitor? (Dec '04) |
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By Angie Becker Kudelka, River Watch Director, Rivers Council of Minnesota
The other day I was asked, "Given that we are all so busy these days, why do citizens spend their time monitoring water?" Good question, Why Monitor?
Monitoring is a tool that helps us understand more about the rivers and lakes that we use. By making careful observations and measurements of the water important to us, we start to build a base of information about conditions of these water bodies.
Minnesota is lucky to have a wealth of citizen resources: people that care about the environment and the quality of our state's lakes and rivers. Since the 1970s, citizens have been actively monitoring surface water.
In the spring of 2002, the Minnesota legislature passed a bill that encourages citizen water monitoring (Minnesota Statutes 115.06, subd.4.). This law takes an important step towards identifying the role that water resource management needs to play in both citizen and state agency purview. It directs the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to encourage ambient water quality monitoring by citizens and provides technical assistance to citizen and local group water quality monitoring efforts. The MPCA is encouraged to integrate citizen monitoring data into water quality assessments and agency programs, provided that the data meets agency quality assurance and quality control protocols. In May 2004, the MPCA also submitted a monitoring strategy to the Environmental Protection Agency that explained what the state was doing to understand and assess the quality of our waters and promoted the use of a citizen constituency to help monitor Minnesota's surface waters.
So Why Monitor?
- Basic Water Resource Needs Are Not Met By Government Alone.
We still have some very basic water resource needs that aren't currently being met. According to the MPCA's 2004 Surface Water Monitoring Legislative Factsheet, only 8% of Minnesota's 92,000 miles of streams and 14% of its 11,900 lakes have been assessed for meeting water quality standards.
Citizens may not know if our waters are fully safe for drinking, swimming, or eating the fish we catch. Inadequate investment in assessing the health of lakes and streams prevents state agencies, local governments and citizens from finding problems and evaluating solutions.
This means that decisions are often made without enough information. Local, state and federal resources are expended on structures and practices to improve water quality without fully knowing how well those actions work. Perhaps most importantly, citizens and visitors of Minnesota are kept uninformed about the waterways they care about and rely on.
State and local agencies simply don't have the staff and resources to monitor all of Minnesota's waterbodies. Citizen volunteer monitoring (that includes communities, volunteers, schools) is an important, cost-effective contribution to the base of information of specific watersheds. These monitors are crucial not only because they can start to fill gaps, but more importantly, they are front-line participants who monitor the streams and lakes they care about and take ownership in, and contribute to water and related land-use decisions.
Citizen Volunteer Monitoring can:
- Identify & solve problems locally
- Involve people in real science
- Raise awareness
- Provide information on places where no one else is looking
- Create an informed constituency
Some of the rewards in building this base of knowledge from water monitoring activity happen when monitors get a new perspective from being "down by the water." They start making observations from: Is the shore vegetated? What are the surrounding land uses that drain water to this area, to actual measurements such as: What is the abundance and diversity of aquatic life? How much of a specific pollutant is in the water column?
This information will have different uses and benefits depending on who is monitoring and who uses the collected observations or data. Some information may be used as part of education programs that build awareness. Other information can be used to determine if that waterbody meets uses designated by the state and/or meets our needs (for drinking water, human health, recreation, habitat, aquatic life, and/or more). Information may also guide water management decisions at local, regional, or state levels. We call this the Data to Information to Action pathway.
Successful citizen monitoring programs move along the pathway from collecting water from a lake or river (data), to understanding what those data numbers are saying about the condition of the water (information), to providing meaningful information and suggestions to the people that make water management decisions that will restore or protect the waterbody (action).
Citizen volunteer monitoring does not exist in a vacuum and it's more than just the groups themselves. Although the centerpiece of this water monitoring involves people "volunteering" their time, citizen monitoring is not "free." It requires various relationships with on-going watershed assessment and management programs, and various types of support including: funders, technical advisors, monitoring coordinators, and decision-makers.
This is why RCM considers it a top priority to serve a network of these citizen stewards, that we call River Sentinels. We have been working hard to put resources in place that will link River Sentinels to trainings and services that strengthen their programs. Along with MLA, we believe strongly in the power and ability citizens have to ensure that rivers and lakes are important assets to their communities. Citizen volunteers - that are committed to wading into the water to "take its temperature" and help determine its health. Citizen volunteers - that are interested in raising awareness and promoting positive changes at the local level. Citizens volunteers that are willing to celebrate the good news and decry the bad.
So Why Monitor? Cassie Champion, of the Metropolitan Council, may have put it best:
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"We monitor because we care; |
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we care because we are informed; |
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we are informed because we monitor." |
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To those citizen volunteers out in the trenches and the leaders of citizen groups, may we say that you ARE doing important and valuable work. Thanks for taking care of your watershed.
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Reports, Initiatives Signal Growing Value of Citizen Monitoring with RCM's Help (Jan '05) |
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The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has released the, "Citizen Monitoring of Surface Water Quality 2005 Report to the Legislature." The biannual report; required of the MPCA by Minnesota Statutes 115.06 subd. 4, provides updates on citizen monitoring activities. It is intended to provide a brief summary of advances made in citizen monitoring in the last two years (2003-2004). Progress in citizen monitoring includes improvements in MPCA's overall monitoring activities, use of citizen monitoring data, technical/financial assistance, accessibility of data--including accessibility of citizen data and the promotion of citizen monitoring. Rivers Council of Minnesota has been championing citizen involvement in monitoring and water resources issues, and RCM's work in this arena is featured throughout the report. View the PDF report: http://www.pca.state.mn.us/publications/reports/lrwq-s-1sy05.pdf
Even greater news for River Sentinels collecting water quality data is that transparency tube (t-tube) data will be used for determining turbidity impairments for the first time during the MPCA's 2006 stream assessment. Stream water clarity (measured with a t-tube), is an often used water quality measurement taken by citizen volunteers, including those in the MPCA's Citizen Stream Monitoring Program. Transparency (or clarity) is closely linked with turbidity. Minnesota has a state standard for turbidity, against which water quality impairments can be assessed. According to Laurie Sovell, MPCA's CSMP coordinator, "By establishing a scientifically based link between transparency and turbidity, we can use an inexpensive, simple water quality measure tracked by volunteers to assess whether a stream is impaired." A workgroup of water quality experts from MPCA developed specific criteria for using transparency tube data in the turbidity assessment process. Pam Skon, PCA Volunteer Monitoring Coordinator, noted, "This is a big step forward. The lake program has been using citizen data for a long time and now the stream program will be doing that, too. We think it's an important step." For more information on the specific criteria for the turbidity assessment, please contact Laurie Sovell, MPCA, at 651-296-7187 or 1-800-657-3864, or contact RCM at 320/259-6800.
Further plans for the use of citizen monitoring data are included in the Monitoring Strategy that has been submitted to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A requirement of all states, "Minnesota's Water Quality Monitoring Strategy" describes a 10-year plan for surface and ground water monitoring. RCM staff contributed to the Monitoring Strategy report, which can be viewed at: http://www.pca.state.mn.us/water/pubs/wqms-report.html. In addition, a proposal for RCM, the Minnesota Lakes Association and the U of M Water Resources Center to conduct more monitoring plan training programs and monitoring skills workshops through the Legislative Commission on Minnesota's Resources will be introduced in the 2005 legislature. Also weaving its way through this year's legislature is the Clean Water Legacy, which may include up to $1 million for citizen volunteer monitoring. Watch for further developments in Thalweg, on our web site and in the Minnesota Water Watchers newsletter.
Progress toward using citizen volunteer water quality data is welcome news for Minnesota, where only eight percent of lakes and 14 percent of streams are assessed for meeting water quality standards. It is also great news for RCM members, supporters and partners who have been working for three years to help improve the situation. The campaign began with a bill passed in 2002 encouraging greater use of citizen monitoring. In spring of 2003, RCM, the Minnesota Lakes Association and River Network released "An Evaluation of Citizen Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring in Minnesota" identifying important steps to better utilize citizen's time and energy. (View the evaluations.) A Service Provider Directory to assist citizens, nonprofit organizations and local governments interested in Citizen Monitoring was also developed by RCM and is available at our web site. Thanks to the support of the Legislative Commission on Minnesota's Resources, citizen monitoring programs have been able to expand and improve through a Monitoring Plan training program and monitoring skills training workshops developed in partnership with the Minnesota Lakes Association.
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