A new regional river water quality monitoring system assembled by the Reservoir Center for Water Solutions will now provide real-time data to the public from the Anacostia, Potomac, and Shenandoah Rivers. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
The next time you go fishing or paddling on the North or South Forks of the Shenandoah River, you can hop online to check today's water quality conditions. The Reservoir Center's interactive map includes data from the North Fork near Woodstock and the South Fork near Shenandoah, showing metrics such as turbidity – or cloudiness, algal pigment, dissolved oxygen, and water temperature.
MARK FRONDORF: The way that it is presented on the dashboard is that it makes it very easily accessible to just your average recreational enthusiast.
Mark Frondorf is the Shenandoah riverkeeper with the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, a partner on this project.
FRONDORF: Paddlers can go out and go, "well, how cold is it out there … you know, how muddy is it?" … Oxygen levels are also very important. As water temperatures rise, oxygen levels tend to fall, and it can provide a real early warning detection system of a possible fish kill, if the oxygen levels drop too low.
The newly installed sensors, donated by the Xylem water tech company, will provide baseline data that can be used to track water quality trends over time – and how they're impacted by various stressors.
FRONDORF: We've really had drought conditions since March of 2023. … We're seeing more and more tension being placed towards the development of data centers in and along the Shenandoah watershed, and they have the potential to consume a tremendous amount of water.
While all of Virginia remains in varying degrees of drought, the dashboard reports good conditions in the North and South Forks as of Tuesday afternoon, with the water generally clear and at temperatures in the 70s.
