Upper Sligo Creek Water Quality Monitoring Station Page
Biological monitoring
Montgomery County is preparing to start a countywide assessment of conditions in the Montgomery County streams. The assessment will monitor and evaluate the actual presence or absence of biological life (macro invertebrates) and stream channel habitat conditions (conditions of stream riffles, and pools, extent of channel erosion, sedimentation, riparian tree cover) as primary indicators of stream health. As part of that effort, volunteers from Friends of Sligo Creek have recently received training from biologists from Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). A monitoring station for the Upper Sligo Creek watershed has been set up. The results of the monitoring will tell us how well we as a community are protecting our watershed. A practice biological monitoring assessment will occur in the fall of 2003. Residents (including kids) of the Sligo Headwaters Civic Association are welcome to participate. If you are interested in participating or want more information, contact Edward_B_Murtagh@yahoo.com.
In general the water quality in Upper Sligo Creek is poor to fair. This is due the land use changes which resulted in an increase of impervious (non-absorbent/non-permeable) surfaces in our watershed and also due to the lack of stormwater management in the Upper Sligo Creek watershed. Increases in impervious surfaces cause an increase in stormwater run-off. Uncontrolled stormwater run-off carries sediment, nutrients, petroleum products, hazardous waste, trash, and other contaminants into the stream, all of which are detrimental to biological conditions in the stream. Studies show that stream health is directly related to imperviousness.
Recently Montgomery County DEP published a document on restoration in the Anacostia watershed (Sligo Headwaters Civic Association is part of this watershed). See http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/mc/services/dep/Publications/pdf/anacostia_restoration.pdf
The document explains what the County has done recently to improve water quality in Sligo Creek. The key, however, to improving our watershed is to decrease the amount of impervious surfaces in our community. There are numerous actions and simple behavior changes residents can do to improve the water quality in our streams. These include the following:
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For additional Information on Biological Monitoring see the following sites.
http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/redir?src=websearch&requestId=e7f258d7dafb5459&clickedItemRank=4&userQuery=2003+Montgomery+County+Stream+Protection+Strategy&clickedItemURN=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Fmaia%2Fhtml%2Fmontgom.html
Montgomery County, Maryland Uses Biological Monitoring to Better Understand and Manage Watersheds EPA web pagehttp://montgomerycountymd.gov/mc/services/dep/monitoring/home.html
Montgomery County Biological Survey Homepage