Proceedings of the 2007 Georgia Water Resources Conference, March 27-29, 2007, Athens, Georgia.The Upper Oconee Watershed Network (UOWN), an Athens, GA-based non-profit volunteer organization, was organized in 2000 with the mission to improve water quality in the Upper Oconee River basin through community-based advocacy, monitoring, and education. Quarterly monitoring of both reference and impaired stream segments form the basis for achieving all three of UOWN’s mission objectives. UOWN has developed a model for engaging the public in quarterly monitoring and in the larger annual River Rendezvous events. Quarterly monitoring not only tracks long-term trends in targeted stream segments, but also has resulted in the discovery and remediation of acute incidences of pollution. Six years of data collection revealed high levels of contamination in urban streams as evidenced by high conductivity and bacterial numbers, and potential limitations when using quarterly water quality monitoring to assess the health of Piedmont streams.Sponsored and Organized by: U.S. Geological Survey, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Natural Resources Conservation Service, The University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of TechnologyThis book was published by the Institute of Ecology, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2202. The views and statements advanced in this publication are solely those of the authors and do not represent official views or policies of The University of Georgia, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Georgia Water Research Institute as authorized by the Water Resources Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-397) or the other conference sponsors
