By Prasad Ramnath

Would you like to learn hands-on how to monitor water quality?  Come join the Sierra Club and Stroud Water Research Center on March 10!

It has been over 45 years since the Clean Water Act was passed to regulate water pollution and ultimately eliminate all pollution into public waterways.  While hugely successful, maintaining the quality of our water still faces enormous hurdles.  One way we as citizens can help is by participating in a water-quality monitoring program.

Nestled in scenic Avondale in Chester County, the Stroud Water Research Center conducts global research and education on water quality and watershed restoration.  It was to this place that we headed to, last July on a fine Saturday morning as part of a Sierra Club Outing to learn about Citizen Water Monitoring.   We met with Dr. Tara Muenz who introduced us to the various aspects of water quality, threats to water quality, kits and ways to measure water quality and online resources.  

After a couple of hours of theory, we put on waders (provided by Stroud) and headed to White Clay Creek.  We learnt about how the various sensors, some of them homegrown that measure water quality.  Then we got down and dirty.  We practiced the best ways to collect water samples and then used a kit to measure the amount of oxygen in the water.  I felt like I was back in high school doing Chemistry Lab.   It was great to see that while you could spend a lot of money to buy fancy electronic kits, a basic water quality kit was not very expensive.

The second half of the day focused on pathogens in water and once again we learnt how to build a home grown incubator to culture water samples to test for E-Coli.  Once again, we used an inexpensive kit used by the food industry to measure E-coli concentrations. 

If this sounds interesting to you, Sierra Club and Stroud are offering another citizen water monitoring training event on March 10, this time focusing on macroinvertebrates (think critters in water).   You can register for this event here.  Kids over 10 are welcome to attend with their parents.