Increasing Participation in Water Quality Monitoring Panel Discussion

This panel style session will focus on highlighting the barriers and challenges to participation in water quality and ecosystem health monitoring. Barriers that are highlighted include financial, language, transportation, and other barriers to community members’ participation in water quality monitoring of local streams, rivers, lakes, and coastal systems. Panelists will discuss actions and strategies they have used in their own water programs to reduce and remove these barriers.

Impact/Purpose

The environmental problem addressed by the panel discussion at the National Monitoring Conference is barriers to participation in water quality monitoring that can limit data collection and data coverage for tracking changes in pollutant levels and aquatic ecosystem health indicators in local water bodies. Panelists will speak about their local organization's water program and actions they have taken to increase participation by local community members, educational initiatives, and increasing awareness of safe drinking water practices. The long term importance of the panel discussion is about sharing the lessons learned from the speakers and ways that conference participants can apply similar actions in their own water programs. The panel discussion will be of interest to many attendees of the National Monitoring Conference, which is a national forum for federal, state, Tribal and local water professionals, nonprofits, academia, water consultants and industry, and volunteer scientists.

Citation

Lee, S. Increasing Participation in Water Quality Monitoring Panel Discussion. National Monitoring Conference, Green Bay, WI, March 10 - 14, 2025.