Water quality monitoring now online

A new tool on the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s website will give users a snapshot of the health of the state’s waterways.

ADEQ’s Water Quality Monitoring Program database includes about 1.5 million records going back to 1990 and is updated nightly. Each month, ADEQ collects and analyzes water samples at more than 160 stations around the state from the Arkansas Valley to the Ozark Highlands.

The program monitors the chemical parameters in the state’s rivers, streams and lakes. The data provides a wealth of information on how clean and clear the state’s waterways are and which ones may need extra protection.

Users can sort through data using a number of criteria, including by ecoregion, county or watershed. A drop-down menu even allows users to select individual monitoring stations. They can also search by nutrients, metals, organics or other parameters.

The database can be found at http://www.adeq.state.ar.us/techsvs/water_quality/water_quality_station.asp or by clicking Surface Water Quality Monitoring Data Search Page on ADEQ’s home page (http://www.adeq.state.ar.us) under the Hot Topics column.

In addition to the stations ADEQ monitors monthly, another 100 stations are sampled bi-monthly or quarterly. An additional 30 to 50 stations are intensively sampled over shorter periods for special purposes. Some stations have been regularly sampled since 1974. (EPA's website contains earlier data.)

The Lake and Reservoir Monitoring Program was formalized in 1989 when the first statewide intensive monitoring of Arkansas’ significant publicly-owned lakes was conducted. This included measuring approximately 30 chemical parameters plus bacteria and chlorophyll a.

At least 80 lakes totaling 356,254 acres are included. They range in size from 60 acres to over 45,000 acres.