Water Quality Monitoring & RAMP

Ambient Water Quality Monitoring

Pinellas County implemented a re-designed ambient monitoring program in January 2003. The objectives of our monitoring program:

Provide long-term assessments of water quality, measure success of management programs, and meet National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit requirements
Support local efforts to maintain or improve water quality
Determine the status and trends of water quality
Estimate nutrient and sediment loads from selected streams and drainage ditches

The open water, water quality monitoring program, covers receiving waters on the east and west coasts of Pinellas County, Lake Tarpon, and Lake Seminole. An Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Monitoring and Assessment-based approach is used to select random sample sites. The new design provides for assessments of water quality status and trends in receiving waters and a method to assess the effectiveness of management actions.

Most of the County’s 30 upland drainage basins covered by its NPDES permit contain at least one fixed sample site just upstream of the freshwater/saltwater mixing zone within streams and drainage systems. At sites in 20 of the basins, water quality and flow data are collected. Data from these sites are used to estimate nutrient and sediment loads to receiving water bodies. Additional monitoring sites include Alligator Lake and Lake Chautauqua and estuarine sites within the Cross Bayou Canal, Allen’s Creek, and Long Branch Creek.

Monitoring parameters include total suspended solids, ammonia, nitrate+nitrite, total Kjheldahl Nitrogen, total and ortho-phosphorus, chlorophyll, turbidity, temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, pH, and flow.

Pinellas County has compiled a comprehensive report on the ambient water quality monitoring results from 2003 through 2007. This report can be found here:
Ambient Report 2003 - 2007 (1.0M)
Appendix A (2.0M)
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Appendix E

For more information, contact Kelli Hammer Levy or Mark Flock at (727) 464-4425.

RAMP

The Regional Ambient Monitoring Program (RAMP) was initiated by the Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP), in 1992 for the purpose of coordinating the bay-wide water and sediment/benthic quality monitoring programs of Manatee and Pinellas counties, Hillsborough EPC and the City of Tampa. RAMP meets quarterly to collect water samples in a common container for interlaboratory comparisons and to discuss approaches to strengthen overall monitoring program compatibility. Each of the monitoring programs has its own laboratory run the samples for a core group of parameters (TN, nitrate+nitrite, ammonia, TSS, TP, orthophosphate, color, turbidity, and chlorophyll a), and the RAMP participants compare the results at a following meeting. To date, the RAMP participants have worked out differences between laboratories for several critical parameters (chlorophyll, TN, TP, TS) and continues to work on others.

The successful coordination effort has recently been joined by Charlotte, Sarasota, Lee and Polk counties monitoring programs and has been recognized by the State of Florida as a core group for inclusion in the developing statewide program. The RAMP participants also bring updated methods and techniques to the group for discussion and testing among the partners. Some of these methods and techniques include "the new STORET", the TMDL process, and laboratory certification (NELAC).

For more information, contact Sue Myers at (727) 464-4425.