Volunteer Spotlight: Water Quality Monitoring Volunteers

This summer Sound Rivers launched, Swim Guide, a new water quality monitoring program where we sample for fecal bacteria levels at 22 locations in the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico river basins, and get the results to you so you can swim safely!

Samples were collected weekly at our chosen sites, and then transported to local labs for analysis, giving us the results 24 hours later. With bacteria level results in hand, we notified the public through a number of avenues, and published the results to Swim Guide. Swim Guide is a mobile  app and website that makes it easy to find water quality information near you. Every week for the sixteen weeks of the summer we sent out water quality updates through our text list (text SWIM to 33222), website (https://soundrivers.org/swimguide), and weekly water report videos onsocial media.

How could we get all this done you ask? Our wonderful volunteers!

From June through August almost 2 dozen trained volunteers collected hundreds of samples, traveling by foot, boat, and car. Volunteers followed careful collection procedures, keeping samples on ice, and getting them to our lab for analysis every week.

Our Swim Guide volunteers made this entire program possible. Without the help of these dedicated volunteers and their concern for clean water, we would not be able to bring you regular and timely information about bacteria levels in our local waterways. We are extremely thankful for their help and passion for the work we do, and look forward to working with them next year! If you’d like to join this group, email volunteer@soundrivers.org to join our 2019 Swim Guide team.

Here are just a few photos of our 26 summer volunteers. Thank you Team!