Editor’s Comments: We Know What’s in the Water

You might think of this issue as the magazine’s sample case. Decades ago, sales reps ­traveled the country lugging heavy suitcases full of carpet swatches or wall coverings or even miniature models of farm machinery and equipment. Here, in a much easier-to-carry package, are some samples of—well, sampling equipment, which is still the basic and essential tool that makes our jobs possible.

For all the good ideas we might have about how to improve water quality—source control, filtration, various forms of treatment—we can’t be effective without gathering reliable data first. The article, “In Pursuit of Data,” illustrates several novel uses and set-ups for sampling equipment, both automated and hand held. Beer, anyone? Craft breweries in the US and Canada are monitoring the volume of water they use and the nutrient content and other parameters of their wastewater to make their production more efficient and environmentally sound. And researchers in California are using automated data loggers used to measure the amount of water entering drywells and recharging the groundwater supply.

Ordinary folks figure prominently in these efforts, from students in Virginia who monitor the amount of litter in local streams to volunteers taking samples to detect bacterial contamination at sites along the San Lorenzo River to citizens in Nepal who are using apps on their smartphones to record and report daily water levels in local streams, part of an ongoing diversion project to increase water supply in the Kathmandu valley.

Just as important as gathering the data is how we analyze it and draw conclusions. This article outlines Pierce County’s five-year effort to characterize illicit discharges. Most NPDES permitees have an Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination program, but this one is taking it to the next level by tracking trends—correlating IDDE incidents with land-use categories, percent of impervious surface in various drainage basins, and so on, and looking at which types of pollutants are most common in which areas. The author will also be speaking at this year’s StormCon conference—Wednesday, August 30, at 3:30 p.m., if you’re attending.

Finally, this article reports on very long-term trends: 20 years’ worth of samples collected at industrial sites, analyzed to see which constituents correlate strongly with TSS (some of the results are surprising) and which types of BMPs work best, in the author’s experience, for different types of pollutants.

You won’t find Willy Loman in this issue (and the whole thing has a happier ending than Death of a Salesman), but you might find new ideas for deploying the latest sampling and monitoring tools—or even new tools you weren’t aware of. Please feel free to share details of your own sampling program in the comments section on our website or by ­emailing [email protected].