Specialized monitoring services, as well as policing and legal institutions should obviously be designated to implement laws and regulations. The environmental problem, however, is very complicated, very extensive and comprises almost all sectors of society. Therefore, it is almost impossible for the above-mentioned institutes to monitor everything, to check whether every company observes the conditions of its permit, or to monitor every discharge. Citizens play an important part in this aspect of environmental management. In the United States, NGOs and citizens have been very involved in monitoring water discharges into streams and rivers.
Many groups regularly conduct canoe trips down local rivers to note every discharge into the river.
These groups record information about the location, the color and smell of discharge, the health of the surrounding vegetation, etc . In some situations they may take photographs of the discharge and even take water samples at the point of discharge. This information is then submitted to the enforcing agency. With this data, the agency is often able to identify unregulated discharges as well as identify violations of permitted discharge limitations. In many countries the environmental problem can be discussed and has become a subject of public discussion.