Our River Monitoring Project

By Bob Barbieri

The River Prairie Group of the Sierra Club conducts water tests on rivers throughout DuPage County. The River Monitoring Project, launched in January 2000, performs quarterly and monthly testing on a number of sites along the Salt Creek and the East and West Branches of the DuPage River. The river water samples are collected and tested  by local Sierra Club volunteers. The group summarizes the test results on their website to educate DuPage residents about the waterways in their backyards. The test data are also valuable to researchers, educators, and policymakers, and have ongoing value--providing a baseline against which the rivers’ water quality can be analyzed in the future. Of course, we always welcome new volunteers to help with this effort.

River samples are routinely tested for four chemical compounds (phosphate, nitrate, ammonia, chloride), temperature, pH, and in some areas, dissolved oxygen. The first four chemical compounds pose the greatest threat to DuPage County’s watersheds, but it is worth noting that the first two are not toxics – in fact, they are just the opposite. Categorized as “nutrients,” phosphate and nitrate act as fertilizers that feed algae and aquatic plants, and in sufficient concentrations, fuel their overgrowth, suffocating fish and other river life. Ammonia, too, acts as a fertilizer, but in addition, it is highly toxic to aquatic organisms. Besides their use as landscaping and agricultural fertilizers, phosphorus, nitrate, and to a lesser degree ammonia are also present in Publicly Owned Treatment Plants (POTW) discharges. So, too, to a lesser degree, is chloride, but its primary source in DuPage County rivers is road salt runoff in wintertime.

The River Prairie Group is in the process of preparing a report summarizing the results of our water monitoring over the last seven years. We expect it will be available in the next few months. For more information, or to inquire about volunteering, please contact Bob Barbieri at bob-barbieri@comcast.net.