The Pensacola and Perdido Bays Estuary Program (PPBEP) is pleased to announce the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Gulf Program has awarded a $750,000 grant to support the development of a regional Water Quality Monitoring Collaborative.
This collaborative effort will establish a comprehensive network of sentinel water quality monitoring sites across the Pensacola and Perdido Bays watersheds. Project partners include Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties, the City of Orange Beach, and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.
Over the next three years, the program will collect monthly water quality data at approximately 30 sites, building on existing water quality monitoring efforts, standardizing water quality monitoring parameters and methods and ensuring consistent and comparable data across the watersheds. Data collection includes nutrient and bacteria parameters, key indicators of water quality conditions. These data will feed into PPBEP’s biennial State of the Bays Report, support the launch of a new public-facing water quality dashboard, and guide development of a water quality improvement action plan aimed at making the region’s waters swimmable and fishable.
Establishing a coordinated water quality monitoring network was a priority action of PPBEP’s first Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP), which provides a roadmap for improving the health and resilience of our watersheds and communities. Long-term, standardized monitoring of the Pensacola and Perdido Bays watersheds is critical for tracking environmental conditions and trends, measuring progress toward restoration goals, and informing local decision making.
The Water Quality Monitoring Collaborative will improve transparency and accessibility by making it easier to share water quality results with the public, partners, and decision-makers. Local communities have continually expressed an interest in the health of their local waterways for fishing, swimming, and recreation. The new dashboard will help visualize water quality information in a clear and meaningful way - educating, informing, and connecting communities to the bays they care about.
“This collaborative came together as a direct result of several engagements with our Technical Committee and regional partners that expressed the need for consistent and comprehensive water quality monitoring,” said Whitney Scheffel, Senior Scientist with PPBEP. “By working together and standardizing how we monitor our waters, we can better track progress and support meaningful restoration efforts.
The mission of the Pensacola and Perdido Bays Estuary Program is to restore and protect the Pensacola and Perdido Bay watersheds through restoration, education, and unbiased monitoring of our bays, estuaries, and watersheds. PPBEP serves as a trusted source for residents, businesses, industry, and the community on issues relating to preserving, restoring, improving, and maintaining the natural habitat and ecosystems of the bays, estuaries and watersheds of Pensacola and Perdido Bays.
