Water Quality

NEIWPCC is assisting the New England states and EPA on a three year, two-phase project that will encompass the design and implementation of a biological and chemical monitoring project.

The project utilizes a probabilistic stratified random sampling approach, subsequently providing unbiased assessments of wadeable streams chosen from watersheds throughout New England. Select methodologies and established protocols will be used to determine the environmental health of shallow streams and provide a base of data for future trend analyses. The project will provide the Region and participating States with reliable tools that can be used to reflect regional and/or statewide water quality and biological conditions with a high level of statistical confidence. Forty randomly selected monitoring stations will be surveyed in year-one of the project period.

Year two will consist of thirty new randomly selected stations with a 20% re-draw of the original forty to account for temporal variability. Each year duplicate samples will be collected at 10% of the stations. Approximately seventy stations will be monitored over the two-year sampling period. These stations will be sampled for invertebrates, fish, and water chemistry. In-stream and riparian habitats at each of the sites will also be assessed.

For Phase 2 of this project, NEIWPCC, EPA New England, and ORD's Atlantic Ecology Division are inviting state participation. This joint effort will permit, for the first time, a statewide comparison of wadeable streams in individual states and across New England. The intention is to create partnerships with states for the sampling and analyses. Using a probability design and a common set of indicators, each state would conduct a survey and assess the condition of its wadeable streams independently. The intent is to evaluate 100% of the assessed waters for each state using biological indicators for satisfying the individual state's 305(b) reporting requirements. These efforts can then be aggregated to assess conditions of wadeable streams for all of New England.

These collaborative monitoring efforts are consistent with existing initiatives NEIWPCC has ongoing. NEIWPCC works closely with the New England states and New York in their efforts to share information regarding interstate monitoring projects, 305(b)-assessment comparability, water quality standards, and 303(d) listing methodologies.

For more information, visit EPA's page on the wadeable streams project at http://www.epa.gov/NE/lab/news.html