Inland Water Monitoring
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Water Quality Monitoring Program Overview
The DEEP Water Monitoring Group conducts annual water quality monitoring to evaluate the physical, chemical and biological condition of the State’s waters. Group staff collect a wide variety and large quantity of information each year, including water chemistry data, water temperature data, bacteria data, biological community data (fish, macroinvertebrates, diatoms) and tissue contaminant data.
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PFAS Surface Water and Fish Tissue Monitoring
Information on DEEP efforts to monitor PFAS in surface waters and fish tissue.
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Connecticut Lake Watch is a community-based science project of the DEEP Volunteer Water Monitoring Program. Volunteers are trained to monitor the water quality of local lakes and ponds across Connecticut.
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Stressor Identification and Causal Assessment Work
Stressor identification involves defining and listing possible sources of pollution, evaluating existing data, designing a sampling program to bracket the sources if additional data are needed, characterizing the causes, and, finally, identifying the most probable cause.
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Water Temperature Monitoring Project
Water temperature is very important to aquatic organisms as it can drive chemical reactions and physiological activity. In addition, water temperature is an important factor in determining which species of aquatic organisms, such as fish, are able to live in a particular section of river or stream. The Water Monitoring Group routinely monitors water temperature at wadeable river and stream locations across Connecticut. Data are collected to complement routine and probabilistic ambient biological monitoring data, to identify high quality watersheds as part of the Group’s Healthy Watersheds Initiative, and to support evaluation of temporal trends, quantification of natural variability, and testing of hypotheses and predictive models related to climate change and water resource management.
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Water Monitoring Group Reports and Publications
This page provides a list of reports and publications produced by the Water Monitoring Group. The Water Monitoring Program collects and interprets physical, chemical, and biological data from State waters. One of the major functions of this program is to support designated use assessments, as required under the Federal Clean Water Act, and this is communicated through the Integrated Water Quality Report. Another key role is to provide summary information of important program elements for use by DEEP and the public.
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Connecticut Healthy Waters Initiative
For several decades, the DEEP Monitoring Group has been building multidisciplinary datasets that include water chemistry data, physical habitat assessments, and biological information. The primary purpose for these data is to support water quality assessments. In addition, through multiple partnerships, the Monitoring Group is using these data to improve our understanding of healthy waters in Connecticut
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Aquatic Life Impacts of Phosphorus Research
The CT DEEP Monitoring Group is engaged in several efforts to study the effects of phosphorus in water bodies. This webpage provides information on the monitoring efforts, results and analysis conducted by the Monitoring Program. These efforts include recommendations by the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering report ‘Methods to Measure Phosphorus and Make Future Projections’ developed as part of Public Act 12-155, An Act Concerning Phosphorus Reductions in State Waters.
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Volunteer Water Monitoring Program Overview
CT DEEP encourages groups and individuals interested in helping to conserve and protect our water resources to become volunteer water monitors. The Volunteer Water Monitoring Program utilizes a three-tiered approach to volunteer water quality monitoring, which is also increasingly referred to as 'citizen science' or 'community science'. The three-tiered approach allows for participation by volunteers having a wide range of skills and interest levels.
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2019 CT Volunteer Water Monitoring Conference
The 2019 Volunteer Water Monitoring Conference was held on April 5, 2019 at Three Rivers Community College in Norwich, CT. The conference was organized by the CT DEEP in collaboration with partners, and marked the 20 year anniversary of the DEEP Volunteer Water Monitoring Program. The event featured five concurrent oral presentation sessions and workshops as well as a student poster session. More than 100 volunteer water monitoring groups from across Connecticut were represented.
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2014 Volunteer Water Monitoring Conference
The 2014 Volunteer Water Monitoring Conference was held on July 25, 2014 at Goodwin College in East Hartford, CT. The conference was the first such conference to be organized by the CT DEEP to celebrate volunteer water monitoring in Connecticut. More than 100 individuals attended representing individual volunteers (citizen scientists), watershed group leaders, municipal commissioners, college and university professors, state and federal scientists, students, and representatives from the environmental consulting industry. In total more than 40 volunteer monitoring groups were represented at the conference!
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Ambient Benthic Macroinvertebrate Monitoring
The DEEP Water Monitoring Group has used benthic macroinvertebrate communities to help characterize stream and river water quality since the mid-1970s. Benthic macroinvertebrates are animals without backbones, who inhabit the bottom of rivers and streams, as well as many other waterbody types. These organisms are very well studied and have a long history of use as indicators of water quality. Certain types, including mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies, can survive only in the cleanest water quality conditions. Other major groups of macroinvertebrates are true flies, beetles, worms, crustaceans, and dragonflies.
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Fish Tissue Contaminant Monitoring
Monitoring of toxic contaminants in tissues of fish and invertebrates has been conducted by DEEP in partnership with the CT Department of Public Health (DPH) since the late 1970s. Efforts have historically included analysis of levels of mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). More recent work has sought to study new contaminants of emerging concern, such as per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS).