Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is responsible for keeping Oregon’s waters safe and healthy for many uses such as drinking, recreation and agriculture as well as for ensuring fish populations are able to thrive. Water Quality Monitoring provides critical information for understanding how well these goals are being met and for identifying emerging water quality concerns, planning wastewater and industrial permit limits, assessing compliance with environmental regulations, developing effective watershed pollution reduction strategies and understanding trends in water quality statewide.
Oregon DEQ’s Water Monitoring Program meets these needs by:
Planning and coordinating environmental data collection efforts to ensure the right data is collected to answer the question at hand.
Collecting representative, valid environmental data through physical, chemical and biological sampling and assessment.
Managing environmental data to ensure availability of accurate and complete data for agency programs and the general public.
Analyzing and interpreting water quality related data to produce reports which identify water quality conditions, identify threats to water quality