Susan Williams is a lifelong farmer, living on 247 acres in Moniteau County, Missouri with her family and a few dozen cattle. She's also a citizen scientist, monitoring the air and water quality near her home for signs of pollution.
Nearly eight years ago, she and her neighbors got a letter, explaining that a new hog feeding operation would be moving in nearby. They were concerned about runoff from the feedlot making its way into their watershed. When the hog farm was approved a few months later, they started the Moniteau County Neighbors Alliance to advocate for the local environment in future conflicts.
As a part of that advocacy, Williams and her neighbors formed a Stream Team through the Department of Natural Resources' Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring program.
Trained by DNR scientists, VWQM volunteers use kits to test their local streams quarterly for phosphorus, ammonia and nitrogen, as well as pH, conductivity and twice-yearly surveys of small aquatic species, such as clams, snails and insect larvae.
Now, those citizen-led projects are taking on an air of urgency as more "official" monitoring projects have been canceled or downsized by cuts to federal funding and layoffs. Most recently, a 50-year program testing lakes across Missouri announced it will stop collecting data next summer.
"Missouri's lost funding from the feds, and you can't do this without funding…" Williams said. "We've been having some discussions with, how are you going to determine water quality? I mean, how are you going to know about these trends?"
Williams said these volunteer teams — who often live next to the water bodies they're monitoring — can be a crucial first step in identifying an environmental concern.
"Sometimes citizens will see huge fish kills. You report that to DNR, and it might be a week or so before they get out there," she said. "Well, by the time a week's gone, the fish have washed away, animals have eaten them, they've disintegrated, so they [DNR] don't see what you saw and took a picture of."
Robert Voss heads the Monitoring and Assessment Unit at the Department of Natural Resources — part of his job is overseeing the volunteer program. He said it's crucial that volunteers are there to see what his team can't.
"Our volunteers act kind of as sentinels for water quality," Voss said. "So when there's immediate environmental concerns, they're often the ones that are reporting those concerns to us through our environmental emergency response line."
He said that the volunteer program is supported by funds from the federal government. While the future may include "some belt tightening here and there," Voss said DNR sees the data VWQM teams provide as a crucial part of their work.
"We can't be everywhere. We have limited funding as well," Voss said. "Being able to have information from the citizens that we can use to better target what resources we do have, to make sure that we're collecting good, timely information to indicate when a water body needs more attention and needs more protections or needs remediations… I think is really important and is going to become more important as resources become less."
In 2024, the Stream Team program had more than 1,800 water quality volunteers. The teams test more than 3,500 sites along Missouri's waterways.
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