EGLE Surface Water Monitoring 2020
Biologists, toxicologists, and engineers with EGLE's Water Resources Division (WRD) pull on their waders every summer to assess Michigan’s water quality. Staff sample surface waters (lakes and streams) to evaluate their condition, measure trends, gauge restoration projects, and identify emerging water quality problems.
WRD staff are passionate about the work they do and look to improve Michigan waterways one step at a time. Surface water monitoring in 2020 was a busy field season that started in June and ended in September; however, there are some of the programs that sample year-round. Biologists sample Michigan’s streams for macroinvertebrates (aquatic bugs) looking for their abundance and diversity to give us clues about the water quality.
In 2020, staff sampled 151 macroinvertebrate sites statewide. In addition to this work, there was water chemistry monitoring (73 sites), harmful algal bloom monitoring (31 sites), E. coli monitoring (123 sites), fish contaminant monitoring (48 sites), PFAS surface water sampling (287 sites), sediment sampling (7 projects) and nutrient expression sampling in rivers (9 sites) and lakes (12 sites). That’s 741 locations in one summer!
If you are interested in learning more about this monitoring, please visit our website at Michigan.gov/WaterQuality. If you are interested in learning about water quality in your watershed, visit MyWaterway.EPA.gov.
Improvements to the Pollution and Solution Mapper and Access on the Open Data Portal
The EGLE WRD E. coli Pollution and Solution Mapper has been modified to improve performance. The purpose of this series of interactive maps is to provide the public with access to important public health information including E. coli monitoring locations, data summaries, and information on potential point and nonpoint sources of bacterial pollution. Specifically, issues we are addressing include slow load times and freezing while zooming in on the maps.
To increase data accessibility, staff will soon be working to place several of the layers on the EGLE Open Data Portal, including TMDL watersheds and E. coli monitoring sites with data summaries. Assessment units for the Great Lakes, beaches, rivers, and inland lakes can currently be found on the Open Data Portal. These GIS files represent the spatial extent of water bodies, or portions of water bodies, which correspond with assessment units described in the 2020 Integrated Report (Clean Water Act Sections 303(d), 305(b), and 314).