Our Water Quality Monitoring program is a volunteer-led effort designed to supplement King County’s water quality monitoring in Carkeek Park streams. Our program measures many of their same metrics but expands the number of testing locations.
Volunteers are assigned a specific location within Carkeek Park where they will conduct water quality tests periodically using testing kits. The kits are provided by CWCAP through the SnoKing Watershed Council’s Water Watchers program as part of the Global Water Watch program. These tests help to identify potential pollutants and provide an assessment on the overall condition of the water. To ensure accurate and reliable data collection, all volunteers are required to undergo formal training training sessions.
Special thanks to SnoKing for providing funding, training sessions, and support.
Why is water quality monitoring important?
Urban creeks like those in Carkeek are especially vulnerable to water quality issues. Stream conditions are affected by road runoff, sewage leaks, pet waste, industrial pollution, pesticides, etc. In order to preserve local wildlife populations such as fish, invertebrates and birds it’s crucial that we monitor metrics such as dissolved oxygen, pH, and temperature for any concerning trends.
What do we do with the data we collect?
We share our data internally as well as with the SnoKing Watershed Council. In rare circumstances where we find concerning results we will notify King County.