Water Quality Monitoring

Welcome to Sherburne SWCD's Water Quality Monitoring Program page. The purpose of this page is to provide information about water quality within Sherburne County's rivers and streams. This site provides access to raw water quality data that is currently being collected by Sherburne SWCD and other local partners.

Tracking the condition of water quality throughout Minnesota's streams, lakes and rivers is a monumental task. Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is responsible for tracking, collecting and analyzing this information.

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Sherburne County SWCD staff along with trained volunteers are monitoring the condition of our local streams, rivers, lakes, estuaries and wetlands. The data collected includes water quality, flow, turbidity and temperature. This information tells us: the amount of sediment, algae, & other materials suspended in the water, potential causes of low transparency, perceived suitability of a stream for fishing, swimming or boating and how rainfall events affect our streams rivers and lakes. Additionally this information helps bring about community awareness of pollution problems, restores problem sites, become advocates for their watersheds. Finally, monitoring provides the SWCD and agency partners information that is used to determine if water quality trends are occurring and to what level our conservation work is improving our water resources. Click here to view Sherburne SWCD's current Monitoring and Assessment Programs.

Rain Gauge Reader Program

The Sherburne SWCD operates a Rainfall Monitoring Program throughout the county. Rain gauges are read and recorded daily by our citizen volunteers. At the end of each month our volunteers submit their readings to the SWCD. The SWCD then submits those data records to the statewide archives maintained by the State Climatology Office.

This information is used for lake level and stream flow predictions, justifying crop losses, tracking drought conditions, predicting future weather conditions, and for research at many levels. This data has proven to be very helpful at the local and statewide levels.

Sherburne SWCD currently has a number of great rain gauge monitors, but we continue to seek volunteers. The District provides the official rain gauges and data sheets free of charge. For more information on the rainfall monitoring program, please contact our office at 763-220-3434.

Sherburne Soil and Water Conservation District
Sherburneswcd.org 763-220-3434 425 Jackson Ave. NW Elk River, MN 55330
Open Monday - Friday 8:00 - 4:00, by appointment Closed on Federal Holidays