Pleasant Bay Citizen Water Quality Monitoring Program

 

The Pleasant Bay Citizen Water Quality Monitoring Program is an outgrowth of the Pleasant Bay Resource Management Plan.  In 1999, with grant support from the EOEA, the Alliance designed the bay-wide monitoring program, developed a draft QAPP, and set a goal to initiate monitoring in spring 2000.  The Alliance and associated water quality groups recruited and trained more than one hundred (100) water quality sampling volunteers to work in the Pleasant Bay estuary, and developed a draft volunteer handbook. The Alliance collects samples once monthly in June and September, and twice monthly in July and August.  Samples are collected at two depths for fourteen (14) stations and at one depth for two (2) shallow stations.  For each sampling run of the monitoring season one station is randomly selected for replicate sampling.  The Alliance and its volunteers successfully competed all six dates of sample collection for both the 2000 and 2001 monitoring season.

 

Measures of dissolved oxygen; salinity and other field observations are compiled from field data sheets at the Chatham Water Quality Laboratory.  Analysis of nutrient parameters is undertaken at the SMAST Laboratory.  Data from the SMAST Laboratory will be incorporated with the field data in spreadsheet format and analyzed. In spring 2001 the Alliance published its first interim water quality report which presented the 2000 monitoring data to local, regional, state and federal resource managers and public policy makers, as well as the general public.  Water quality data is being used to meet the following program objectives:

 

¨      Provide comprehensive background data on general water quality conditions in the Bay, with emphasis on nutrient levels resulting from surrounding land uses;

¨      Monitor nitrogen-loading trends by calculating the Health Index (eutrophication) for the each sampling location; and

¨      Analyze the Health Index and other data for use in policy, regulatory and educational applications.  

 

Specifically, the data is also being applied in the formation and evaluation of wastewater management plans underway in Chatham, Orleans and Harwich.  Sampling for this program is coordinated with sampling conducted in conjunction with the Orleans and Chatham wastewater management plans.   

 

The Pleasant Bay Resource Management Alliance manages the water quality monitoring program.  The program was developed by the Alliance and the following organizations: Orleans Marine Water Quality Task Force, the Chatham Water Watchers/Chatham Water Quality Laboratory, Harwich Natural Resources Office, Cape Cod Commission, and Cape Cod National Seashore.  The Alliance manages overall program operations, while volunteer coordination, sampling and transportation of samples to SMAST are undertaken by the local organizations.  

 

The Alliance’s Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) has been signed by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.  Monitoring has occurred at sixteen locations throughout the Bay on a monthly basis from May through October in 2000, and June through September in 2001.  Additional stations are planned for the 2002 monitoring season.  Parameters include: Chlorophylla, Pheophytin a, ammonium (NH4), orthophosphate(PO4), nitrate + nitrite (NO3+NO2), dissolved organic nitrogen (DON), particulate organic nitrogen (PON), particulate organic carbon (POC), salinity, dissolved oxygen, temperature, transparency, total depth and weather observations.