Ogeechee Riverkeeper (ORK) has updated publicly published data collected throughout 2024, funded in part by a $5,000 grant from Bass Pro Shops. The grant from Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s Outdoor Fund supported the Lower and Coastal Ogeechee Watershed Monitoring Program, which ORK created to routinely and strategically monitor particularly vulnerable areas within the watershed and address the gap in water quality data.
Throughout 2024, Onset HOBO data loggers measured water temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and specific conductance at 30-minute intervals. The data collected will help determine the long-term impact that growth and development have on the health of the Ogeechee River Basin and ensure that water quality parameters collected up and downstream of discharge sites are within permitted limits.
The data was collected downstream from the site of a major Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant slated to begin discharging into the Ogeechee River later in 2025. This data can be compared to data collected after the facility starts discharging and will provide an invaluable baseline for assessing water quality in the river.
Additionally, the bacterial data gathered over the past year has been instrumental in identifying and resolving issues with sewer and failing septic systems. The data allowed ORK and municipalities to trace leaks and failures so the issues could be repaired, resulting in cleaner water.
In the grant period, ORK collected approximately 450 bacterial samples of E. coli and enterococci. Additionally, the continuous monitoring probes collected 52,800 total continuous monitoring data points.
This project is ongoing, and the long-term data sets that ORK is developing will be used for years to come to monitor the changing environment and inform decision-makers about the impacts to clean water in the basin.
All the data collected from this project is publicly available on ORK’s website from the following links: https://www.ogeecheeriverkeeper.org/data/ and https://www.ogeecheeriverkeeper.org/vernon/.
