It’s hard to heal the Sound until we know exactly what’s harming it. Measuring water quality is a powerful tool for making pollution visible.
We test for bacteria, oxygen levels, nutrients, and more. Armed with reliable, current, and targeted data, Save the Sound and the citizens we serve can:
- Identify pollution hot spots
- Build public support for needed investments in wastewater infrastructure
- Drive investment in cleaning up waterfronts, bays, coves, and harbors
- See trends in local water quality conditions over time
- Find the cleanest beaches on the Sound for swimming and paddling
- Find the dirtiest beaches on the Sound and work to make improvements
Save the Sound has several programs that measure water quality around the Sound. We publish our water quality data, as well as data from the EPA and your county or town, all in user-friendly formats designed for citizens, researchers, local governments, and elected officials. Explore our offerings:
- Long Island Sound Report Card: a biennial publication on the ecological health of Long Island Sound’s open waters, including oxygen levels, chlorophyll, temperature, and more.
- Beach Report: an evaluation of water quality at 200+ Long Island Sound beaches. The report is based on the SoundHealthExplorer, an interactive web tool that presents monitoring data from every beach on Long Island Sound since 2004, providing a comparative guide to beach health, plus tools for gaining a better understanding of the factors impacting beach water quality.
- Unified Water Study: a study coordinated by Save the Sound which brings together dozens of monitoring groups in measuring the ecological health of their local bay, cove, or harbor.
- Bacteria Monitoring: data from Save the Sound’s summer fecal bacteria monitoring in the Western Sound, starting in 2014 and covering the Sound shore communities of Westchester County, Greenwich CT and Little Neck Bay, Queens.
We hope you find these resources illuminating and empowering. Please consider donating to continue these programs and volunteering as a citizen scientist.
