It started in 1998 with 17 volunteers monitoring the health of 22 streams sites in southeast Minnesota. Today there are more than 400 volunteers and 500 stream sites across Minnesota. The data they collect are indispensable to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).
“Where else do you have continuous data like that? It’s really rare … That citizen component is really important,” said Donna Rasmussen, director of the Fillmore Soil and Water Conservation District, where the Citizen Stream Monitoring Program started 20 years ago.
Volunteers in this program adopt a stream site, tracking how clear the water is weekly during the summer. They use a simple tool called a Secchi tube to measure the clarity, reporting the measurements and their observations to the MPCA. The agency then uses the information to help assess whether the streams meet water quality standards designed to make sure they’re fishable and swimmable.
The MPCA is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Citizen Stream Monitoring Program this year, and produced a video to recognize volunteers and their contributions to cleaner water (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dYpE66xsUI). For many volunteers, their observations and opportunities to bring attention to streams are just as important as the data collected.
One of the volunteers in the video program is Richard Betz, a nine-year monitor on a Flute River site in Cook County. “I can report things like this slumping bank I’ve got here. If I wouldn’t have been here, the county soil and water wouldn’t know about this,” he said.
Ruthann Yaeger, an 11-year volunteer on Silver Creek in Olmsted County, said, “More importantly, the Citizen Stream Monitoring Program gives me a base to speak to people about water. And to be able to show them in ways that this impacts our watershed. And it will impact your well.”
With 69,000 miles of streams and more than 14,000 lakes in Minnesota, the MPCA cannot monitor all that water on a continual basis. For some lakes and streams, citizen data are the only data available. For all waterbodies monitored, the data are crucial to tracking long-term trends in water quality, to see if lake and stream health is getting better or worse over time.
Join us. If you’d like to be part of this program to help ensure clean water in Minnesota, go to the program’s webpage at www.pca.state.mn.us/cmp, or call the MPCA at 651-296-6300 (Twin Cities) or 1-800-657-3864 (Greater Minnesota). The MPCA provides equipment and training, and no experience is needed.