Establishing a 

 Program 



Identifying Information 

 for Collection 



Obtaining Funding and 

 Controlling Costs 



Monitoring involves the collection of repetitive environmental meas- 

 urements or observations over time to determine a condition or 

 track changes in environmental parameters. The information col- 

 lected by citizen volunteers can be analyzed to describe the con- 

 dition of a watershed, indicating whether water quality is improving 

 or worsening. 



A review of existing citizen monitoring programs has shown that 

 there are several key ingredients required to establish a successful 

 program: identifying needed information, obtaining funding and 

 controlling costs, providing credible information, and selecting and 

 keeping good volunteers. 



The first step in developing a citizen monitoring program is to 

 determine the type of data that will be collected. Data should be 

 collected in response to a specific question, a demonstrated need, 

 or special use for the data. Citizen volunteers must know that the 

 data they collect are contributing to some action, or will provide 

 them with some direct benefit or personal reward. 



The data to be collected should permit the use of simple methods 

 and equipment that volunteers can quickly and accurately master. 

 The monitoring project should include quality control assurance 

 adequate enough to instill confidence among decision makers in 

 the data generated. 



Funding for citizen monitoring programs can be obtained primarily 

 from federal and state agencies and private industry and organiza- 

 tions. Federal sources include funds available under Sections 106 

 and 205(j) of the Clean Water Act, the National Estuary Program, 

 and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 

 (NOAA) Sea Grant Program. State funding is sometimes available 

 through general state revenues or through more innovative 

 mechanisms such as user taxes on motorboat fuel or funds ob- 

 tained from industrial fines. Other sources of funding can include 

 grants from private industry or nonprofit organizations. Private 

 funding has been obtained by a number of volunteer estuary 

 monitoring programs. The Rhode Island Salt Pond Watchers or- 

 ganization, for example, has partially funded a citizen volunteer 

 monitoring program through a grant from IBM Corporation. In 

 establishing a volunteer monitoring program, it is very important to 

 secure commitments for program funding. It is helpful if monitoring 

 program project periods coincide with the period of time during 

 which the volunteers can be supported. Loss of program funds 

 during the monitoring project period has caused some volunteer 

 monitohng programs to fail. 



Simple and inexpensive sampling methods can help keep program 

 costs down. Monitoring programs should evaluate a variety of 

 sampling equipment to determine which provides the most useful 

 result for the least cost. However, the quality of the data should not 



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