FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Skagit County's 2023 Monitoring Program Report Tells a Story
Skagit County’s 2023 Water Quality Monitoring Program Report is out—with a twist!
Skagit County Monitoring Program (SCMP) releases annual reports on the water quality data that the County has collected over the year, and what this data means for Skagit’s rivers, streams, and sloughs. Usually, these reports come as large written documents full of graphs, raw data, and science-heavy language. This year it comes in another form, too—A StoryMap.
“We’re so excited to have a more user-friendly way to share this information,” said Commissioner Peter Browning, Chair of the Skagit Board of County Commissioners. “We hope it means more people will tune in to explore the state of Skagit County’s waters.”
Emma Santana, Skagit County’s Water Quality Analyst and creator of the StoryMap, collects samples from 40 different sites on Skagit waterways. She visits each site every other week and records E. coli and fecal coliform, temperature, dissolved oxygen, acidity, turbidity, and nutrients. The interactive StoryMap lets users learn about and see pictures of each sample site by selecting them on a map of the County. It explains in plain language what the water quality results are and what they mean for each watershed. For those who want to dig further into the details of the data, a written report is also available.
In 2023, trends of improving and worsening conditions have varied from site to site, watershed to watershed. According to the StoryMap, Skagit has nine sites ranked as "low concern" for water health, 20 sites ranked as "moderate concern,” and 11 sites ranked as "high concern” this year.
See the interactive StoryMap here, and the full report (PDF) here.
Find more information about the Skagit County Monitoring Program at our website.
For questions or more details, please contact Emma Santana, 360-416-1443, [email protected].
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