This is the beginning of several columns during the next several months dealing with water quality assessment and monitoring. The purpose of monitoring seldom is regulatory, though certainly guidelines, regulations and rules about water management might evolve from a monitoring program. You can have several purposes. First, monitoring is like an regularly scheduled physical or medical exam. It's a good idea to keep track of conditions on a regular basis.
Monitoring provides a benchmark and systematic structured method for keeping track of conditions.
It's measuring the pulse, taking blood pressure, checking cholesterol levels - so to speak. When done with a plan and purpose, monitoring can provide information, which can be used to tell you if something has changed, if stream conditions are improving or deteriorating. Monitoring can provide key indicators used to assess and determine a management or treatment strategy for water systems. In addition, however, monitoring now can give you the baseline data that may make any coming changes in water regulations easier to live with. Instead of dealing with compliance guidelines based on, perhaps, the condition of water in an entire watershed, you would be able to provide information on water quality on your own property.