Surfrider Foundation and Oregon Coast Aquarium: Surfrider’s Cooperative Water Quality Sampling Program

Abstract

The program started around high use beaches to monitor fecal bacteria contamination because people including Surfers were getting sick. This was really a problem of poor planning and overdevelopment in coastal communities and was eventually addressed in the Clean Water Act. All states were mandated to monitor water quality particularly in areas of high public use and recreation. The Blue Water Task force is a volunteer based group that exists to promote clean water, augment state testing, and bring public awareness to possible health threats. In the spring of 2003 the Surfrider Foundation presented the blue water task force program at the aquarium. In the fall of 2003, the Oregon Coast Aquarium’s youth volunteers and the Surfrider Foundation teamed up to create a Blue Water Task Force to monitor water quality along a 20 mile stretch of coastline from Ona Beach to Otter Rock. Surfrider volunteers drop off the water samples at the Aquarium each weekend and the samples are run for Enterococcus counts. Enterococcus is the EPA adopted indicator bacteria for mammalian waste. With the assistance of an Aquarium staff member, the youth volunteers are ale to perform, incubate, and read the test results. The results are posted locally at two different surf shops in Newport, within the Aquarium and on the Surfrider website