Our 2015 water sampling season wrapped up on October 7, 2015. The last sampling day was a dry weather day – about a week after a 2.38″ rainfall on the last day of September.
The cooler temperatures and dry weather led to low bacteria results around the watershed. You can see in the map below there are many small green dots, which mean the bacteria levels are low enough to support swimming! The yellow dots are places where the bacteria levels are nearing the limit for swimmable water. The orange and red dots are all places that exceed the safe levels of bacteria to support swimming. Our archive of data is available here.
Bacteria in the watershed come from a variety of different sources. Some are natural – such as geese and other animals that live here. Others are unnatural – high levels of E. coli bacteria can indicate a sewer leak getting into the river.
Over the next year we hope to focus more on finding and helping to fix the sources of pollution that lead to these pollution “hot spots” in our watershed. We need your help to do this – learn more here.
Our water sampling volunteers get to take a break from their monthly early morning sampling until next spring. If you think you might be interested in helping with sampling in 2016, please contact Sarah Bounty at bounty@neponset.org or 781-575-0354 x302. Our dedicated group of volunteers are the reason we are able to collect this valuable data. Thank you for all of your help!
Sarah Bounty, Environmental Engineer
December 2015
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