Dixon, Aaron, Programs & Community Science, Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association, 338 South Front Street, Wrightsville, PA, 17368, aaron@lowsusriverkeeper.org; Megan, McCarthy, Events & Community Engage, Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association, 338 South Front Street, Wrightsville, PA, 17368, megan@lowsusriverkeeper.org.
Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association’s vision is to ensure drinkable, fishable, swimmable water on the Lower Susquehanna River and raise community awareness for current and future generations on the ecological and economic value of the Lower Susquehanna Watershed.
In June 2023, we launched our Water Watchdogs Bacteria Monitoring Program for the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed which has currently been operating between the Swimming Months between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The purpose of this program is to inform people when popular public river/creek accesses are safe for recreating or not based on the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s safe swimming recommendations for Escherichia coli (E. coli) which we analyze by the IDEXX Colilert-18 Method for detecting Total Coliforms and E. coli.
Since 2023, the program has expanded from 5 monitoring locations to 22 monitoring locations and has engaged over 50 volunteers who help operate the program dedicating many hours and miles of driving. As our program has grown internally, our external community engagement with the program has grown too.
Each week during the program, we publicly share our results in easy-to-understand infographics to the community through the SwimGuide app, Facebook, Instagram, our website, a weekly email, and many events that we have hosted or have attended. We have also worked with two Franklin & Marshall College interns who improved the program and were able to translate the infographics we use for community outreach in Spanish to improve our reach outside of those who speak English.
We aim to continue growing this program and are currently working on ways that we can determine trends, further engage communities, and how we can provide our collection of data to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for their biennial Pennsylvania Integrated Water Quality Report. By engaging with the communities of the Lower Susquehanna Watershed through our Water Watchdogs
Bacteria Monitoring Program, we can bring awareness, education, and advocate for a swimmable River.