City on its way to implementing water quality and flow

monitoring program.

ay to putting in a surface water monitoring program for the entire island to monitor the health of the island’s streams and nearshore waters.

In July, funding from the federal Department of Ecology’s Centennial Clean Water Fund grant of $265,000, enabled the city to hire TEC, Inc. and Battelle Marine Science Lab to create a water quality and water flow monitoring program for the island. The grant will cover about 75 percent of program costs.

Water quality looks at what contaminants are in the water, and flow looks at how much water is flowing, and how quickly, off the island into the sound.

“I want a program with the data management tools and long-term records of how much water we have in our streams,” Cummings said. “These data are basic information you need to know for science to make those next steps and predictions.”

With fixed monitoring stations accumulating data over time, Cummings says the city can get a handle on the health of salmon, streams and nearshores as well as water quantity.

The flow data coupled with an eventual hydrogeological assessment — an analysis of the island’s aquifers from which drinking water is drawn — will show the interface between groundwater to surface water and help estimate how much water the island really has, but that is down the road.

The current program’s aim, Cummings says, is to put in place a system of fixed monitoring stations to collect long-term data that will allow the city to set “triggers” so that if water levels reach certain threshholds, management will know to take specific actions.

“It’s hard to make management decisions if you don’t have long-term records. This will give us that record, a quality assurance control plan, a sampling and analysis plan and a database to manage all of our field data,” she said.

Cummings plans to issue a “state of the water report” for Bainbridge Island every year as soon as she has enough data, possibly as early as 2006.

For the current program, the compilation and analysis of historic data from government and independent sources — including Woodward school students — is nearly complete. The analysis will help direct monitoring efforts to look for potential contaminants based on land use near the island’s surface and nearshore waters.

The next step is to design a water quality and flow program and roll out a pilot program on two watersheds to see if the right data is being captured. The pilot may start October 2006 and run for one year.

For information, see www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/WtrQltyandFlowMonitoring.asp.