Monitor Our Waters

Working Together to Identify Issues & Find Solutions

We proudly support a vast network of community volunteers throughout all seven counties of the Milwaukee River Basin who monitor our streams and rivers in four key areas of interest:

Baseline Water Quality
Road Salt
Emerging Contaminants
Mussels

Milwaukee Riverkeeper’s Volunteer Water Monitors are the eyes and ears of our waterways, and often, are the first to detect and report issues. It’s this level of community engagement and participation that allows our team and other friends of the rivers to identify issues, develop strategies to solve problems, and implement real change.

Our work simply would not happen without the tireless efforts of our Volunteers!

Collage of pictures showing volunteers participating in river restoration by monitoring waterways

Why Become a Water Monitor

Five Benefits of Joining Our Community Volunteer Team

As an official water monitor for Milwaukee Riverkeeper, your work:

Helps fill gaps in our data so we can tackle issues together
Contributes to crucial statewide research
Allows you to connect more meaningfully with your local waterway
Gives you a great reason to spend more time outside
Protects your local section of the Milwaukee River Basin

Are You Ready to Join Our Community-Science Volunteers?

Become a Baseline Monitor

Our community-science baseline water monitoring program is more than just a tool to gather data on river health. It empowers community members and trains them to be protectors and stewards of our shared waters. Our volunteer monitors help recognize and identify questionable land management practices, erosion control violations, illicit discharges, and more.

Milwaukee Riverkeeper collects more than half of the water quality data in the Milwaukee River Basin, and is uniquely situated to fill the monitoring role, adding capacity to under-resourced agencies. Collecting and analyzing data offers insight into river health and provides information for decision-makers to make more sound decisions to achieve clean water.

May-October Commitment: Volunteers must visit designated stream stations monthly.

Activity Level: Moderate. Participants carry monitoring equipment while navigating uneven terrain on land and in-stream.

Additional Requirements: Car or transportation necessary.

Let’s Dive in a Little Deeper

Why Do We Monitor Water Quality?

Long-term data collection allows Milwaukee Riverkeeper to monitor the impacts of restoration projects, policy changes, and climate trends. It helps measure progress and refine strategies for restoring our rivers. Data helps pinpoint pollution sources such as agricultural runoff, urban stormwater, or industrial discharges, enabling targeted advocacy and remediation efforts. Data informs restoration activities, like habitat improvements and erosion control, and ensures compliance with water quality standards under laws like the Clean Water Act.

The data collected through the baseline water quality program, and data collected by partner government agencies, is used to create the Milwaukee River Basin Report Card. This annual report provides insight into river health and also transparency for residents into current issues impacting their water resources.

What Do Water Quality Monitors Do?

Volunteer water quality monitors are trained at two levels of water quality monitoring.

Level I volunteers learn to monitor dissolved oxygen (DO), air and water temperature, turbidity, streamflow, and assess macroinvertebrate populations and stream habitat and channel conditions using basic monitoring kits and equipment.
Level II monitors use calibrated sensors to measure DO, water acidity (pH), specific conductivity (the ability of water to conduct an electrical current), and water temperature. In addition, Level II monitors deploy automated thermistors, which measure water temperature on an hourly basis throughout the monitoring season. Level II monitors collect and send water samples to the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene to be tested for phosphorus levels. Level II volunteers are encouraged to assess macroinvertebrate populations and stream habitat.

All water quality monitors enter data into the WDNR’s Surface Water Integrated Monitoring System (SWIMS) database, where that data is readily available to WDNR staff for making management and policy decisions.

Become a Road Salt Monitor

Here in the Great Lakes Region, we are lucky to be surrounded by freshwater from local rivers and inland lakes to Lake Michigan, the source of drinking water for over 2 million people in Wisconsin. As freshwater becomes increasingly scarce around the world, it is vital to protect this vulnerable resource.

Chloride, the key element in road salt, poses a threat to the health of our rivers, environment, and drinking water. If used correctly, road salt can be a helpful safety precaution, but when over-used, it can leave a lasting mark on our waters. Once our waters are contaminated with chloride, there is no easy and effective way to remove it, and high salt levels are highly toxic to fish and aquatic life.

Milwaukee Riverkeeper deploys road salt volunteers every winter to collect chloride and conductivity data following snowing or melting events. By collecting information about chloride levels, we can better understand the sources of pollution and work with property owners and winter deicing professionals to address the issue. This work helps fill gaps in data, and we also offer training and educational materials, which can help over-stretched municipalities and under-resourced agencies.

January–March Commitment

Activity Level: Vigorous. Participants will carry equipment while navigating uneven, icy, snow-covered terrain in cold temperatures.

Additional Requirements: Car or transportation necessary.

Learn More

Let’s Dive in a Little Deeper

Why Do We Monitor Road Salt?

Milwaukee Riverkeeper’s Road Salt Monitoring program identifies streams that are reaching toxic chloride levels. Chloride, the key element in road salt, can have lasting impacts on freshwater. Although effective as a deicing agent, high chloride levels can kill fish and other aquatic life instantly (acute toxicity) or at lower levels over longer periods of exposure (chronic toxicity).

Chloride also poses a threat to humans, whether it flows into Lake Michigan or seeps into groundwater, chloride does not break down further and is always present. Monitoring identifies waterways that are struggling with road salt pollution, which helps target action to address this problem and better protect our freshwater.

Data collected is used as evidence to list waterways as impaired. As of the 2024 Impaired Waters List, 117 miles of waterways within the Milwaukee River Basin are considered impaired by chloride pollution due to monitoring efforts of our volunteers and partners.

What Do Road Salt Monitors Do?

After a heavy snowfall or snowmelt, monitors head to their stream station to collect a water sample and measure the water’s conductivity. Conductivity, the water’s ability to hold a charge, indicates possible high levels of chloride in the stream. If the reading is high, monitors collect a water sample and it is sent to the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene for analysis for total chloride.

This monitoring program is trigger-based, meaning the Milwaukee Riverkeeper team will connect with volunteers when there is a likely runoff event, and direct that sampling efforts take place within the next 48 hours, if possible. Sampling sometimes requires repeated visits for up to four days to identify chronic toxicity. In these occurrences, Milwaukee Riverkeeper staff may be able to assist volunteers when taking daily water samples is required.

Small Actions You Can Take This Winter

Not ready to commit to monitoring? Here are some things you can do to protect our waters from road salt pollution:

Shovel early and often to reduce the need for salt.
Sweep up excess salt to reuse for future storms.
Use only the salt you need. 12 oz of salt is all that’s necessary for a 20-foot driveway or 10 sidewalk squares. Dedicate an old 12 oz coffee mug to measure the amount of salt you will need.

Become an Emerging Contaminants Monitor

An emerging contaminant is an umbrella term for a chemical or material that poses a potential or real threat to human health or the environment. These contaminants are normally not yet regulated. Emerging contaminants can include chemicals from prescription drugs, antibiotics, recreational drugs, herbicides, and even personal care products. One day sampling events are held three times annually. The water samples collected through this monitoring effort are analyzed for 60+ chemical compounds.

Single-Day Commitment (Occurs 3x/ year)

Activity Level: Low. Participants will scoop a water sample from an accessible location.

Additional Requirements: Car or transportation necessary.

Let’s Dive in a Little Deeper

Why Do We Monitor Emerging Contaminants?

While we treat water and wastewater for many different harmful substances and microbes, most wastewater and water treatment facilities were not designed to monitor or treat for the wide variety of chemicals and compounds we use in our daily lives. That means that other than human and food waste, much of what you consume and put down the drain is generally not removed by the sewage treatment process. Many emerging contaminants can be transformed during the treatment process, for better or worse, and then eventually end up in Lake Michigan.

In 2016, to address growing concerns, Milwaukee Riverkeeper, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Carroll University, and the Urban Ecology Center formed an emerging contaminants task force called Community Leaders Engaged in Aquatic Research (CLEAR MKE). CLEAR is dedicated to better understanding the presence and distribution of these emerging contaminants in local streams and Lake Michigan.

This coalition works to document these chemicals and learn more about the potential impacts of these contaminants on water quality and wildlife, and also works to educate local communities on their impacts and ways to avoid these contaminants getting into our waterways in the first place.

What Do Emerging Contaminant Monitors Do?

Emerging contaminant sampling events are a single day sampling event that does not involve getting into the river. Volunteers go to one of 20 designated sampling stations in the Milwaukee, Menomonee, Kinnickinnic, Fox, or Root River, and collect a water sample using a pole or a rope sampler. After the sample is collected, volunteers drop their sample off with Milwaukee Riverkeeper or Urban Ecology Center staff. Samples are passed on to our partners at UWM’s School of Public Health where they are analyzed and tested for a laundry list of contaminants.

Small Actions You Can Take Now

Not ready to commit to monitoring? Here are some things you can do to protect water quality:

Have unused meds? Refrain from flushing them and instead drop them off at a local med take back site. To find a site, visit: takebackmymeds.com
To avoid contaminants from personal care products entering our waterways, try to use products with more natural ingredients.
Try minimizing or eliminating herbicides and fertilizers used for lawn care. If herbicides are used, be sure to read the label and never apply before a rain event.

Special Project Monitoring

Diving Deeper to Inspire Meaningful Action

Our waterways are dynamic, and understanding their health requires ongoing research and partnership. By participating in collaborative research, our water quality monitoring team is working to uncover new insights about the challenges and opportunities facing our rivers, streams, and lakes. While not open to volunteers, these initiatives form a cornerstone of our commitment to advancing science-based solutions for cleaner, healthier waterways in our community and around the world.

Mussel & Macroinvertebrates

Freshwater mussels are fascinating aquatic creatures that can tell us detailed information about the long-term health of waterways and aquatic ecosystems. Despite their importance, very little work has been done to monitor freshwater mussel populations in Wisconsin. Read More

Microplastic Research

Our team deploys cutting-edge robots targeting the removal of harmful microplastics. Once removed, volunteers characterize the waste by size, weight and type in order to better understand the source of the pollution. Read More

Trout Stream

We investigate the daily fluctuations of temperature and dissolved oxygen concentrations in trout streams to understand the ongoing threat to these waterways. As this project continues we aim to identify potential sources impacting conditions and potential restoration efforts to keep these unique ecosystems healthy. Read More

Stormwater

To better understand the flow of bacteria from stormwater systems to local rivers, Milwaukee Riverkeeper and other partners monitor bacteria levels. Read More

PFAS

We use passive samplers to collect information on PFAS entering our waterways from wastewater treatment sludge-spreading fields and treated wastewater. Read More

Sucker Monitoring

Milwaukee Riverkeeper participates in ongoing research with the Shedd Aquarium’s Migratory Fish Monitoring Program. Our team helps track the spring migration of sucker fish. Read More