Surface Water Quality in New England: What the USGS Monitors and Studies

The U.S. Geological Survey works with federal, state, local and tribal partners to give resource managers, planners and the public reliable, impartial data on water quality, and to explain it.

Green macroalgae covering much of the water in the Bass Harbor Marsh Estuary, Acadia National Park. Photograph courtesy of Charlie Jacoby, National Park Service.

Long-term monitoring

The USGS runs local and statewide networks measuring field properties such as pH, dissolved oxygen, specific conductance and temperature, and chemicals such as nutrients and contaminants.

• Connecticut: nutrients, major ions, trace elements, total organic carbon and indicator bacteria at several sites since 1973.
• Rhode Island: the same, plus specific conductance, pH and dissolved oxygen, since the mid-1970s.
• National Water-Quality Assessment Program: in 2016 sampling the Connecticut, Green and Norwalk Rivers. An intensive 1999–2001 study related urbanisation to the abundance of stream invertebrates, toxic trace metals, and persistent organic chemicals such as DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), chlordane, PCBs and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in streambed sediment.
• Trend studies: 37 stations in the Scituate Reservoir drainage, Rhode Island, from 1988 to 2012; sulfate, chloride, residue on evaporation, nitrate and phosphorus in the Blackstone, Connecticut and Merrimack Rivers over parts of the 20th century; and, with Vermont's Department of Environmental Conservation, nitrogen and phosphorus in 18 tributaries of Lake Champlain, related to land use, population, point sources and best management practices (BMPs).

Testing best management practices and low-impact development

With the Federal Highway Administration and state agencies, the USGS measures how well BMPs and low-impact development (LID) protect water quality, sampling frequently across varied land, terrain and weather.

• Burlington, Vermont: streamflow, phosphorus and suspended sediment in Englesby Brook from 2000 to 2010, to test urban BMPs in a small city stream.
• Ipswich River basin, Massachusetts: with the state's Department of Conservation and Recreation and the EPA, field and model studies of LID and cutting water demand, including swapping a paved parking lot for a porous one, installing rain gardens and porous pavement, and a 3,000-square-foot green roof.
• Southeast Expressway, Boston: with the Federal Highway Administration and Massachusetts Highway Department, how well a single catch basin, three 1,500-gallon oil-grit separators and mechanical street sweeping cut suspended sediment and related constituents.
• Niantic River Estuary, Connecticut: with the state's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the effect of new sewers on nitrogen reaching nearby waters.

Loads and pollution budgets

The USGS helps states estimate loads of nitrogen and phosphorus for total maximum daily loads and trend analysis, and of chloride from road de-icing.

• Assabet River, Massachusetts: weekly composite samples from October 2008 to December 2010 above and below its two largest impoundments, Hudson and Ben Smith. Wastewater adds substantial phosphorus, feeding nuisance aquatic plants in the impounded stretches in the growing season.
• Long Island Sound: nitrogen loads from Connecticut streams and areas to the north, October 1998 to September 2009, with trends.
• Lake Champlain: 20 years of phosphorus and nitrogen data from 18 tributaries, analysed with a new weighted-regression method, with Vermont and New York agencies.
• Chittenden County, Vermont: chloride from road de-icing in three streams, 2005 to 2007, estimated from streamflow and specific conductance.

Mercury

Mercury is hard to monitor because of how it behaves and the tiny amounts involved; the USGS leads the science internationally. With the EPA, the National Park Service, states and others, it studies mercury's forms, toxicity, build-up in wildlife and clean-up:

• MERGANSER, a model built with several partners, predicts mercury in fish and loons in New England lakes;
• mercury and methylmercury flowing into and out of Lake Champlain, 2001 to 2009, split into particulate and dissolved forms and related to atmospheric deposition;
• mercury in water, sediment and wildlife above and below a former chloralkali plant in Coos County, New Hampshire;
• with the Park Service, whether iron or activated-carbon amendments can reduce mercury methylation in wetland sediments at Acadia National Park.

Toxic and emerging contaminants

With tribes, the EPA, the Fish and Wildlife Service and states, the USGS studies pharmaceuticals, wastewater micropollutants, PCBs, pesticides and bacteria:

• sources of fecal coliform bacteria in the Meduxnekeag River near Houlton, Maine, with the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians;
• a screening of contaminants (dioxins, furans, PCBs, mercury) in plants, animals, water and sediment of the Penobscot River, with the Penobscot Indian Nation and federal partners, to assess tribal members' exposure through traditional practices;
• 14 common pharmaceuticals and fecal bacteria in the Merrimack River at Lowell, Massachusetts, in 2008 and 2009;
• steroid hormones and other micropollutants reaching Lake Champlain from a Burlington treatment plant through combined sewer overflows and treated effluent.

Eutrophication and algal blooms

With the EPA and the Park Service, the USGS studies nutrients reaching estuaries, the process of eutrophication, and nuisance algal blooms:

• SPARROW models of nutrient sources to estuaries in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic;
• trends in nitrogen reaching the Northeast Creek Estuary at Acadia, 1999 to 2011;
• atmospheric, ocean and land sources of nutrients to the Bass Harbor Marsh Estuary at Acadia in 2011 and 2012, where algal blooms recur;
• how wastewater management on Cape Cod affects nitrogen reaching ponds, streams and coastal waters at risk of eutrophication.

Sources

• Thomas Huntington, Surface Water-Quality Activities of the U.S. Geological Survey in New England, USGS Fact Sheet 2016–3012, March 2016. https://doi.org/10.3133/fs20163012
• The photograph is taken from the fact sheet's PDF.