Since 1998, IOWATER has provided Iowans the opportunity to take an active role in protecting and restoring Iowa’s waters by monitoring the quality of streams across the state. IOWATER is Iowa’s volunteer water monitoring program. The program is flexible, allowing local groups to design their own monitoring plans, including site selection, monitoring frequency, and which parameters to monitor. Plans will vary, from a fifth grade class testing once a year, to a conservation club testing several sites in a watershed on a monthly basis. IOWATER uses a watershed approach, integrating land use, soils, and drainage basins with water quality.

A total of 18 workshops were held across Iowa during the year 2000. At these workshops, more than 500 volunteers were trained, including teachers and students from 70 Iowa middle/high schools and 22 faculty/students from Iowa universities and colleges. Workshop participants are trained to identify the benthic organisms that live in streams, to chemically test the water, and to evaluate the stream’s habitat. Participants are provided all the equipment to start monitoring.

A public on-line database at the IOWATER web site (www.IOWATER.net) allows school groups and others to register sites to monitor, submit water-quality data collected in the field, and access data collected by other volunteers in their watershed and across Iowa. Also available is data collected professionally.

Although currently focused on streams, IOWATER will be expanding in 2001 to include lake/pond monitoring, soil monitoring, and benthic macroinvertebrate indexing. Citizens who participate in the monitoring process benefit the environment by becoming actively involved in local water-quality issues and by assisting in restoration of Iowa’s waters. And they’ll have a little fun and some muddy exercise to boot!